Model Comparison
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Grok 4.7
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) leads Grok 4.7 (medium) by 116 Elo, and their 95% ranges sit 25 Elo apart. Among 78 models, each ranked by its best configuration, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is #14 and Grok 4.7 is #22. Cost per script: $0.017 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) and $0.215 for Grok 4.7 (medium).
Last updated , from board data generated at 01:13 UTC.
Picks and Verdict
PickDeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max)
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) for the strongest writing here, 116 Elo above Grok's best at $0.017 a script and done in 2.4 minutes.
PickGrok 4.7
Grok 4.7 (medium)
Pick Grok 4.7 (medium) when facts and visual cues matter most, since it scores 86.2 on Substance, Accuracy & Value against 82.5 for DeepSeek at max, at $0.215 a script.
Grok 4.7 knows its facts: every setting scores 85 or better on substance, above anything DeepSeek V4.1 Flash manages. It still loses this page. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) leads Grok 4.7 (medium), Grok's best setting, by 116 Elo, with 95% ranges that don't overlap, for $0.017 a script against $0.215 and well under half the wait. That's the #14 model of 78 against the #22 model, each ranked by its best setting. The cheaper DeepSeek settings hold up too. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (high), at about a cent, sits 47 Elo above Grok's best, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (low), under a cent, sits 68 below it. Both ranges overlap Grok's, so the board can't separate either one from a draft that costs at least seventeen times as much. With thinking off, DeepSeek drops below every Grok setting, and those ranges don't overlap. Grok's weak rows are craft and length: more than six points down on craft at the top settings and about seventeen on length. It does lead on visual cues, by almost three at medium. DeepSeek at max is the easy call for me.
How to Read the Writing Score, Writing Elo and 95% Ranges
Writing Score and Writing Elo. The Writing Score (0 to 100) is the weighted average of the nine metric scores: seven from the judges, Length Adherence from code and the Slop Score half from each. The Writing Elo is a rating from pairwise comparisons: on each script, each configuration's average across its drafts is compared with every other configuration's, and gaps within the draft-to-draft variation count as draws. Elo rewards winning often, so the two can put configurations in a different order.
Elo ranges. Each 95% range shows how far a configuration's Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently. It comes from resampling every configuration's recorded draft scores on each reference script and ranking again. Comparing two separate ranges does not test the Elo gap between them: ranges far apart are strong evidence for the order, and overlapping ranges do not mean a tie. The reference scripts stay fixed, so the ranges say nothing about new scripts. The methodology page has the full description.
All Thinking Levels of Both Models
Every ranked configuration of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Grok 4.7, scored on the same 10 scripts by the same four judges.
- Each row is one configuration: the model at one thinking level. The dot is its Writing Elo, a rating from pairwise comparisons of the scores on each script, and the bar is its 95% range: how far that Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently.
- When two bars overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations. Bars far apart are strong evidence for the order.
- The table under the chart lists the same configurations in the same order and adds the Writing Score (the 0 to 100 consensus of the judges and code), cost, time and configuration rank (the place among all configurations on the board).
Shaded rows are the configurations chosen for the metric comparison below.
| Configuration | Writing Elo | 95% Range | Writing Score | Cost / Script | Time / Script | Reasoning Tokens | Configuration Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) | 2040 | 1999 to 2076 | 81.0 | $0.017 | 2.4 min | 22,010 | #28 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (high) | 1971 | 1925 to 2010 | 80.3 | $0.012 | 1.1 min | 13,809 | #38 |
| Grok 4.7 (medium) | 1924 | 1863 to 1974 | 79.6 | $0.215 | 6.2 min | 27,687 | #42 |
| Grok 4.7 (high) | 1897 | 1850 to 1939 | 79.6 | $0.305 | 9.6 min | 42,549 | #43 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (low) | 1856 | 1815 to 1906 | 79.3 | $0.0077 | 0.7 min | 6,740 | #46 |
| Grok 4.7 (low) | 1834 | 1784 to 1890 | 79.0 | $0.064 | 1.7 min | 2,760 | #48 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (no thinking) | 1638 | 1588 to 1680 | 76.8 | $0.0037 | 0.3 min | 0 | #61 |
Cost is one script at the API list price of the route used, uncached and without judging. Time is the average for one accepted script, retries included.
Computed Findings Across Thinking Levels
Each finding is computed from the configurations above. Where two 95% ranges overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations.
- Best Configurations Head to Head. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) leads Grok 4.7 (medium) by 116 Elo, and their 95% ranges do not overlap (1999 to 2076 against 1863 to 1974), which is strong evidence for that order.
- Lowest Thinking Levels Head to Head. At their lowest thinking levels, Grok 4.7 (low) at Elo 1834 and $0.064 per script leads DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (no thinking) at Elo 1638 and $0.0037 per script by 196 Elo. Their 95% ranges do not overlap.
- Same Level Name, Side by Side. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash has the higher Writing Elo at every level name both models use: low and high. The 95% ranges overlap at every one of them. Level names come from each provider, so the same name does not promise the same reasoning budget.
- Cheapest Configuration Overlapping the Top One. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (high), at $0.012 per script, is the cheapest configuration whose 95% range overlaps that of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max), at $0.017 per script: 1925 to 2010 against 1999 to 2076, so the board cannot separate them. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) costs about 1.4 times as much per script.
- Cheapest DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Configuration Above Grok 4.7's Best. The cheapest DeepSeek V4.1 Flash configuration with a higher Writing Elo than Grok 4.7 (medium), at Elo 1924 and $0.215 per script, is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (high), at Elo 1971 and $0.012 per script. Their 95% ranges overlap, so the board cannot separate them. It costs less than the configuration it beats.
- Lowest to Highest Thinking Level. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash moves +402 Elo from no thinking to max, at about 4.6 times the cost per script. Grok 4.7 moves +63 Elo from low to high, at about 4.8 times the cost per script.
Writing Elo at Each Shared Level Name
| Level | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Grok 4.7 | Gap | 95% Ranges |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| low | 1856 | 1834 | +22 | Overlap |
| high | 1971 | 1897 | +74 | Overlap |
Gap is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash minus Grok 4.7 at the same level name, using each model's highest-rated configuration at that level.
Two Chosen Configurations Compared
Pick one configuration of each model to compare their metric scores, consistency across drafts and per-script scores. Each menu starts on the model's best configuration.
Scores by Metric
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) scores higher on four of the nine metrics and Grok 4.7 (medium) on five. Weighted by each metric's share of the Writing Score, Length Adherence does the most to put DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) ahead, with a 17.2-point lead on that metric. The weight beside each metric is its share of the Writing Score.
Consistency Across Drafts
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) | Grok 4.7 (medium) | |
|---|---|---|
| Score spread across drafts (±) | 1.30 | 3.00 |
| Lowest script score | 79.7 Script 10 | 75.6 Script 10 |
| Highest script score | 82.4 Script 7 | 82.2 Script 2 |
| Range across scripts | 2.7 | 6.6 |
Spread is how much the Writing Score moves between a configuration's drafts, and lower is steadier. Green marks the better number in each row.
Scores by Script
Writing Score on each reference script. Gap is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) minus Grok 4.7 (medium), and the higher score is in bold.
| Script | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) | Grok 4.7 (medium) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script 1 opinion / warning explainer | 80.8 | 81.5 | -0.7 |
| Script 2 news-analysis / skeptical explainer | 81.2 | 82.2 | -1.0 |
| Script 3 personal roadmap / opinion | 81.2 | 81.6 | -0.4 |
| Script 4 short explainer | 80.1 | 76.9 | +3.2 |
| Script 5 news-analysis / opinion explainer | 81.1 | 80.5 | +0.6 |
| Script 6 founder announcement / personal origin story | 80.8 | 82.0 | -1.2 |
| Script 7 personal technical walkthrough / agentic workflow case study | 82.4 | 76.5 | +5.9 |
| Script 8 product release announcement / personal observation | 80.7 | 79.0 | +1.7 |
| Script 9 career guide / hiring analysis | 82.2 | 80.2 | +2.0 |
| Script 10 engineering process walkthrough / presentation adaptation | 79.7 | 75.6 | +4.1 |
Scorecards and Thinking Pages
Each configuration name in the table above opens its own scorecard.
Compare With Another Model
Pick a second model. A pair with its own written match-up opens that page, and any other pair opens in the comparison tool.
Nearby Match-Ups by Best Writing Elo
Every configuration wrote five drafts for each of the same 10 briefs, from the same prompt. Generation was closed-book, with the prompt as the only source and no web search or other tools. Each judge scores every draft once: Claude Opus 5.5 at medium effort through the Claude Code subscription, GPT-6.1 Sol at medium reasoning through the Codex CLI, GLM 5.3 Flash through OpenRouter, and Jev 1.13, a typed judge from TypeSafe that answers each metric as a multiple-choice question. The channel's finished script is their reference for the voice, and it gets no score on the board itself.
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