DeepSeek V4 vs Qwen3.5 (397B-A17B)

Pick two tools from the same category to compare side-by-side.

	DeepSeek V4 DeepSeek's V4 generation of open-weight MoE models with 1M-token context and agent-focused reasoning modes.	Qwen3.5 (397B-A17B) Alibaba's Apache-2.0 open-weight Qwen3.5 flagship MoE with very low active-parameter cost and broad multilingual coverage.
Category	model	model
Vendor type	open source	open source
Pricing	free	free
Strengths	+ MIT-licensed open weights for both Pro and Flash variants + 1M-token context window + Selectable reasoning effort modes (non-think plus two thinking modes) + Sparse MoE design keeps activated parameters low relative to total size	+ Permissive Apache 2.0 license + Only 17B active parameters, enabling comparatively cheap inference + First-class MCP and tool-calling support via Qwen-Agent + 201-language coverage for multilingual agents
Tradeoffs	− Branded as a preview release on deepseek.com as of June 2026 − V4-Pro's scale makes self-hosting impractical without large GPU clusters	− Long context beyond 262K requires YaRN extension rather than native support − Flagship commercial Qwen3-Max capabilities are not part of the open release
Used in stacks	0	0