DeepSeek V4.1 Flash on Alibaba Cloud: 1.34s first token, 99.37 cache

AIHubMix10 min read
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash on Alibaba Cloud: 1.34s first token, 99.37 cache

On 2026-11-03/04, the APB Full suite ran against DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 on five providers through AIHubMix. The same model, questions, parameters and request scripts were used for every provider; the model is listed on the AIHubMix model page, and the five provider entries are on the models page. This APB Profile covers Alibaba Cloud only: what each section measured and what came back.

This post reports scores without ranking providers or recommending one. Q, F, P, K and R come first; K is a sub-score of P. The overall score is a summary index, not a certification, and has no confidence interval. The scoring rules are defined in AIHubMix Provider Benchmark Standard v2.0.

Scores across five providers

Bold marks this post's provider. Providers appear in a fixed order, not a ranking. K is a sub-score of P at 20%, shown separately for reference. The overall score is a summary index with no confidence interval. DeepSeek official channel and Alibaba Cloud differ by 0.37 overall and are not distinguishable.

Overall score by provider

At a glance

  • Answer quality: Q 41.75. BFCL 87.00%, HLE 13.29%, AA-LCR 53.60%. Against the official channel the difference is −0.71 percentage points, with a 95% interval of −1.72 to +0.26, so the two are not distinguishable.
  • Function support: F 89.78. 155 of the 177 checks in the denominator passed. An invalid tool schema returned 503 instead of a parameter error, context overflow did not return the documented error type, and an isolated tool result returned 200.
  • Response speed: P 88.58. The first-content-token median was 1.34 s at single concurrency and 1.35 s at 10-concurrency, TPOT was 4.69 ms, and all 180 speed requests were valid.
  • Cache: K 99.37. All 18 hot requests across the 8k and 32k prefixes hit, and no cold control read the cache.
  • Service stability: R 100. All 300 dedicated requests succeeded on the first attempt.

Test setup

The run went through AIHubMix by selecting the provider model ID; the quick start documents the route. DeepSeek's pricing page lists the model's published rates.

Item Detail
Model DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
Requested model ID alicloud-deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017
Returned model name deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017
Access route Via AIHubMix by selecting the provider model ID, not by connecting to the provider's own account
Parameters Non-thinking mode, temperature 1.0, max_tokens 16,384, timeout 300 s, no automatic retries
Thinking off All requests used reasoning_effort=none
Time 2026-11-03 18:07 – 11-04 16:33 UTC+8. Five providers shared one Mac mini, network and account.
Samples Answer quality 4,250 question-runs (BFCL 500 × 3 rounds, HLE 250 × 10, AA-LCR 25 × 10); function cases 60 × 3 windows; speed 90 single-concurrency and 90 at 10-concurrency; stability 300; cache 30 (8k and 32k prefixes, 3 groups each)

Q — answer quality: 41.75

Answer quality used three question sets: 500 BFCL questions at 3 rounds each, 250 HLE questions at 10 rounds each, and 25 AA-LCR questions at 10 rounds each. BFCL was scored by automatic rules; HLE and AA-LCR were judged by the judge model deepseek-flash. All five providers answered the same questions, and the three sets were combined into one accuracy. Ten responses were removed because the questions could not be scored, leaving 4,240 scored question-runs.

Task Questions Correct Accuracy Failures
BFCL tool calls 500 × 3 1,305/1,500 87.00% 0
HLE hard QA 250 × 10 331/2,490 13.29% 8
AA-LCR long-doc reasoning 25 × 10 134/250 53.60% 0
Combined · 95% interval 39.56%–43.85% — 1,770/4,240 41.75% 8

Service failures (failed requests or truncated output) stay in the denominator and count as incorrect; they are not removed. For Alibaba Cloud, HLE output reached the max_tokens limit and was truncated 8 times.

BFCL answers each question in 3 rounds; the table shows the 3 rounds combined.

BFCL category Passed Pass rate
simple_python: one function, correct call and arguments 332/360 92.22%
multiple: choose the right function from several 270/300 90.00%
parallel: call the same function several times in parallel 273/300 91.00%
parallel_multiple: call several different functions in parallel 212/240 88.33%
irrelevance: no function is relevant, none should be called 113/150 75.33%
ahm_multi_turn: three-stage tool chain 105/150 70.00%

Compared with the other four

Q answer quality by task

Against the official channel: the accuracy difference in percentage points, with the 95% interval shown as whiskers; an interval that crosses 0 counts as no distinction. The HLE and AA-LCR judge deepseek-flash belongs to the same DeepSeek family as the model under test and was not calibrated, so its scoring may be lenient.

Q difference from the official channel

F — function support: 89.78

Function cases check whether the interface behavior follows the protocol, not whether the model answers well. The 60 cases fall into six groups, each run in three windows, for 180 checks, judged against the format each provider documents. Checks that were not applicable, invalid or unobserved are excluded from the denominator. Alibaba Cloud passed 155 of the 177 checks in the denominator; group weights give 89.78.

The weighted score is computed from group weights, not a simple pass count over 177.

Group Weight Passed Excluded Group score
Streaming and message protocol 20% 30/30 — 100.00
Tool interface 20% 30/30 — 100.00
Output constraints and parameters 20% 30/30 — 100.00
Context and state 15% 26/30 — 86.67
Errors and recovery 15% 18/30 — 60.00
Metering and cache protocol 10% 21/27 3 77.78
Total · weighted score — 155/177 3 89.78

A window count of 3/3 means the case failed in all three windows.

Failed case Windows failed Reason
Context overflow (context and state) 3/3 Returned an error, but not the documented context-length error
messages format error (errors and recovery) 3/3 Returned 400 with an empty response body, no structured error description
Tool schema invalid (errors and recovery) 3/3 Should return a parameter error; returned 503
Isolated tool result (errors and recovery) 3/3 Should return a parameter error; returned 200
stream_options format error (errors and recovery) 3/3 Returned 400 with an empty response body, no structured error description
Reasoning token metering (metering and cache protocol) 3/3 No reasoning token count returned
Tool definitions counted as input (metering and cache protocol) 3/3 With tool definitions, reported input tokens were not higher than without them
Request isolation (context and state) 1/3 The first step did not reply only STORED as required, so the isolation check could not proceed

These checks are excluded from the denominator and count as neither pass nor fail.

Status Case Count Reason
Not applicable Explicit cache_control 3 Registered in advance as unsupported by this interface

The messages format error and stream_options format error cases failed for all five providers: each returned 400 with an empty body, so the client received no structured error description. Because all five show the same behavior, it more likely sits in the AIHubMix gateway layer and needs separate investigation. Reasoning token metering also failed for all five, but for different reasons: ByteDance and Fireworks reported reasoning tokens even with thinking off, while the other three returned no reasoning token count.

Compared with the other four

F function support

P — response speed: 88.58

Each request carried about 10,000 input tokens and asked for about 1,100 tokens of output. In three windows, 30 requests were sent at single concurrency and 30 at 10-concurrency, for 180 in total. The first-content-token wait (TTFA) is measured per valid request, and the table reports medians. TPOT is estimated from streaming chunk timings, not hardware per-token timing; throughput is valid output tokens at 10-concurrency divided by the batch wall-clock time.

Metric Result
First content token TTFA Single-concurrency median 1.34 s, 10-concurrency median 1.35 s
Generation speed TPOT Single-concurrency 4.63 ms/token, 10-concurrency 4.69 ms/token
Effective throughput (goodput) 10-concurrency 1,313.6 token/s
Valid requests Single-concurrency 90/90, 10-concurrency 90/90
Component scores TTFA 59.65, TPOT 100.00, throughput 100.00; TTFA and TPOT take the lower of the two levels, weighted 35% / 35% / 30%, response score 85.88
P score Response score 85.88 at 80%, cache K 99.37 at 20%, total 88.58

Compared with the other four

All five providers shared the same machine, network and account. The three windows were scheduled provider by provider, so collection periods do not fully overlap and small gaps should not be over-interpreted.

P response speed

K — cache: 99.37

Each group is five requests: the first carries a fixed prefix of about 8k or 32k tokens and seeds the cache; requests 2–4 keep the prefix and change only the question at the end, at 5, 30 and 120 seconds; the fifth uses a new prefix as a cold control. Three windows × two lengths make 30 requests. K is the cached tokens read on hot requests divided by the tokens that should be reusable under the rule, with each length weighted half; K is 20% of P. The matrix shows server-reported cached-token reads.

Prefix Window Seed (request 1) Hot at 5 s Hot at 30 s Hot at 120 s Cold control (request 5)
8k Window 1 0 7,936 7,936 7,936 0
8k Window 2 0 7,936 7,936 7,936 0
8k Window 3 0 7,936 7,936 7,936 0
32k Window 1 0 32,000 32,000 32,000 0
32k Window 2 0 32,000 32,000 32,000 0
32k Window 3 0 32,000 32,000 32,000 0
Prefix Hot hits Tokens read Should be reusable Score
8k 9/9 71,424 72,270 98.83
32k 9/9 288,000 288,279 99.90
K (8k and 32k, half each) 99.37

All 9 hot 8k requests hit, reading 7,936 tokens each; all 9 hot 32k requests hit, reading 32,000 tokens each. The seed request and the cold control read no cache, so hot and cold requests separate cleanly.

Compared with the other four

K cache hit rate

R — service stability: 100

The 300 requests covered four types — short text, 10k long input, tool calls and multi-turn history — and were sent at single concurrency across three windows. Only the first response was checked, for validity and completeness; answer correctness was not checked and no retries were made. Failures in the answer-quality and speed sections count in Q and P respectively, not again in R.

Request type First-attempt success
Short text 120/120
10k long input 90/90
Tool calls 60/60
Multi-turn history 30/30
Total · 95% interval 98.78%–100% 300/300

All 300 requests returned a valid, complete response on the first attempt. R 100 covers only these 300 dedicated requests and does not mean the whole chain had no failures. The lower bound of the 95% interval is 98.78%: even with 300/300, the failure rate is likely below 1.22%.

Compared with the other four

R covers only these 300 dedicated requests; failures in answer quality and speed are recorded in Q and P, not counted again in R.

Provider First-attempt success 95% interval
ByteDance 300/300 98.78%–100%
Baidu 300/300 98.78%–100%
Alibaba Cloud 300/300 98.78%–100%
DeepSeek official 300/300 98.78%–100%
Fireworks 300/300 98.78%–100%

FAQ

Is the 0.37 overall gap between Alibaba Cloud and the official channel meaningful?
No. The two are not distinguishable on this run: the Q difference is −0.71 percentage points with a 95% interval of −1.72 to +0.26, which includes 0, and the overall score is a summary index without a confidence interval.

What does the Q score combine?
Three sets: BFCL 500 questions × 3 rounds, scored automatically; HLE 250 × 10 and AA-LCR 25 × 10, scored by the judge model deepseek-flash. Combined accuracy is 41.75% over 4,240 scored question-runs.

Why is F 89.78 when 155 of 177 checks passed?
The score is weighted by group, not a simple pass ratio. Errors and recovery scored 60.00 and metering and cache protocol scored 77.78, while the three protocol groups scored 100.00.

Why does R report 100 if other sections had failed requests?
R covers only the 300 dedicated stability requests. Failures in answer quality and speed are recorded in Q and P and are not counted again in R.

Is K 99.37 a cache hit rate?
It is the ratio of cached tokens read on hot requests to the tokens that should be reusable, with 8k and 32k each weighted half. The 8k prefix scored 98.83 and the 32k prefix scored 99.90.

Does the 1.34 s first token mean the full answer arrives in 1.34 s?
No. It is the wait for the first content token. Each request asked for about 1,100 output tokens, and TPOT at 10-concurrency was 4.69 ms per token.

Keep reading: the DeepSeek V4.1 Flash series

Sources

  1. https://aihubmix.com/model/deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017
  2. https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing
  3. https://docs.aihubmix.com/en/quick-start
  4. https://aihubmix.com/models
  5. https://api-docs.deepseek.com/

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