DeepSeek anchors the open country of the survey. V4-Pro (MIT) holds an independent index of 53 at $0.44/$0.87 per 1M — the strongest open-weight position — and powers the free DeepSeek app; V4-Flash is a lighter sibling near it on many coding tasks.
DeepSeek anchors the open country of the survey. V4-Pro holds an independent index of 53 at $0.44 / $0.87 per 1M — the strongest independently verified open-weight position in the register, and the point where open weights come closest to the closed frontier on a number that was actually measured rather than reported.
The license is MIT, the model powers the free DeepSeek app, and V4-Flash sits nearby as a lighter sibling competitive on many coding tasks. That combination — permissive license, low hosted price, self-hostable weights, and a genuine independent mark — is what separates DeepSeek from open peers whose standing rests on vendor claims.
The gap to the closed flagship is real and the register does not paper over it: 53 against Opus 5's 61 is eight index points. But for buyers who need open weights, DeepSeek is the reference against which the rest of the open country is measured.