DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) vs GPT-6 Sol (max)

Head-to-head on the Towards AI writing benchmark: same 10 real YouTube scripts, five runs each, scored blind by a three-family judge panel. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) leads overall, 88.1 to 88.0. Their per-model Elo intervals overlap on this board.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max)

#28 Elo 2183 · 88.1/100

GPT-6 Sol (max)

#31 Elo 2166 · 88.0/100

Cost / script

$0.013 vs $0.112

Human baseline

90.9 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) falls below it · GPT-6 Sol (max) falls below it

The verdict

This one is closer than the ranks suggest. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) sits at #28 with 2183.1 Elo and 88.11 overall; GPT-6 Sol (max) is at #31 with 2165.6 Elo and 87.95 overall. Their 95% Elo intervals overlap (2147.5 to 2214.6 against 2127.0 to 2200.7), so do not read much into the exact order. Where DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) pulls ahead: Tone & Voice Match (87.97 vs 85.84) and Hook Strength (88.31 vs 86.91). GPT-6 Sol (max) still wins on Visual Cue Quality (89.15 vs 84.51) and Slop Score (EQ-Bench + ours) (94.08 vs 91.27), so it is not a clean sweep. The trade is price: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) costs about $0.013 per article against $0.112 for GPT-6 Sol (max), so you pay less for the higher rank. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) publishes open weights; GPT-6 Sol (max) does not. Default to DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max). Reach for GPT-6 Sol (max) when visual cues and slop score matter more to you than the headline rank.

Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) for the stronger board result, tone, and the hook.
Pick GPT-6 Sol (max) for visual cues and slop score.

Reading the Elo intervals. Each range estimates uncertainty around one model's Elo. We repeatedly sample from every model's recorded run scores on each task and recalculate the full ranking. Comparing these separate ranges does not test the Elo gap between two models. The tasks stay fixed, so the ranges do not measure how the ranking would change on new tasks.

Metric by metric

Blue bars: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max). Orange bars: GPT-6 Sol (max). Same 0–100 scale; the bold bar wins that metric.

Tone & Voice Match19% weight

88.0

85.8

Writing Craft & Clarity13% weight

88.8

87.8

Substance, Accuracy & Value15% weight

86.8

88.9

Continuity & Emotion14% weight

86.9

86.4

YouTube Best Practices12% weight

87.8

87.9

Hook Strength10% weight

88.3

86.9

Length Adherence8% weight

92.0

91.2

Slop Score (EQ-Bench + ours)5% weight

91.3

94.1

Visual Cue Quality4% weight

84.5

89.2

Everything else that differs

	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max)	GPT-6 Sol (max)
Overall / 100	88.1	88.0
Writing Elo	2183	2166
Run-to-run spread (± overall std)	1.120	1.330
Cost per script (USD)	0.013	0.112
Avg latency (s)	76.2	171.0
Open weights	Yes	No

Full scorecards: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) · GPT-6 Sol (max). How scoring works: methodology.

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