TL;DR: Different jobs, measured in the same test. On Aug 25, 2026, Grok 4.6 finished every build it was given: a working tracker, all 32 sign-up answers, and two follow-up edits that landed, though it spread the form across ten projects where the leader used two and was one of the slowest and most expensive results of that test. DeepSeek V4 Pro built the cheapest complete match tracker of the same test, V4 Flash landed both of its edits cleanly but ran out of time on the long form, and Flash had already built the best-looking app for a fraction of the field's cost on Aug 1, 2026. Route by task inside Taskade Genesis rather than standardizing on one.
What TSK-1 Found
Both families ran in the same test on Aug 25, 2026, and the findings split by measure. Grok 4.6 finished everything: a working match tracker with every asked piece, all 32 answers of the client sign-up form saved, and both follow-up edits landed. The price of that thoroughness was time, money, and shape: dozens of failed build actions on each app made it one of the slowest and most expensive results of the test, and it spread the form across ten projects where the leader used two. On the DeepSeek side, V4 Pro built the cheapest complete match tracker of that same test. V4 Flash finished its tracker and made both follow-up changes cleanly, but its long-form build ran out of time. The earlier tests below add design, speed, and depth to the DeepSeek side.
- Grok: Aug 25, 2026: Grok 4.6 built a working match tracker with every asked piece; it saved all 32 sign-up answers across ten projects where the leader used two; both follow-up edits landed; one of the slowest and most expensive results. Grok Build 0.1 produced no app in the same test.
- DeepSeek: Aug 25, 2026: V4 Pro built the cheapest complete match tracker of the test; V4 Flash finished its tracker and both follow-up changes cleanly, but its long-form build ran out of time. Aug 1, 2026: Flash built the best-looking app. Aug 3, 2026: Flash posted the cheapest, fastest, and cleanest run of that test. Aug 6, 2026: Pro built the richest workspace of that test (a record 60 fields, 8 automations, all four builds word for word).
See the full evidence at /tsk/grok, /tsk/deepseek, and the TSK-1 hub.
Grok 4.6 vs DeepSeek V4 Flash
This is the clearest split on the page: the model that finishes the long, detailed build at any price against the model that builds the best-looking first draft for the least money. DeepSeek V4 Flash won on design on Aug 1, 2026. It was the only model that looked right in both light and dark, ran without a single error, and laid out cleanly on a 390px phone screen, and it did all of that at a fraction of the field's cost. On Aug 2, 2026 it won on design again, this time with real data saved and both themes working throughout, at half the leader's build cost.
Aug 25, 2026 put the two in one test, and on the match tracker they look alike. Grok 4.6 built a working tracker with every asked piece, and both of its follow-up edits landed. DeepSeek V4 Flash finished its tracker and made both follow-up changes cleanly. Edits are not the difference between these two. Cost is. Dozens of failed build actions on each app made Grok 4.6 one of the slowest and most expensive results of the test, and after finishing the tracker it ended without telling the user it was done.
The 32-question client sign-up form is where the two part ways. Grok 4.6 took all 32 questions and saved every answer, but spread the data across ten projects where the leader used two. DeepSeek V4 Flash had run the same form on Aug 3, 2026 as the cheapest, fastest, and cleanest result of that test, in 12 minutes 36 seconds. On Aug 25, 2026, though, its long-form build ran out of time. The honest reading: Flash did the long form quickly and cleanly on Aug 3 and did not finish it on the day the two met, while Grok 4.6 finished it thoroughly, slowly, at a price, and in an untidy shape.
On published rates the gap is just as wide. Grok 4.6 bills $2.00 per million input and $6.00 per million output under a 200K prompt, as of Sep 2026. DeepSeek V4 Flash bills $0.44 and $1.32 at peak, and half that off-peak. If your workload is a stream of first drafts, that difference is the decision. If it is one long form that has to arrive complete, the Aug 25, 2026 result favors Grok 4.6, at a price.
Grok 4.6 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro
One rung up, the question becomes who leaves you with the richer workspace, and who builds the complete app for the least money. DeepSeek V4 Pro's strength is depth and value. On Aug 6, 2026 it built the richest workspace of its test: 8 automations, a record 60 fields, and all four builds word for word. On Aug 5, 2026 it won the tracker test as the most efficient app that opened, after two stronger-looking results could not be used and did not receive a score. Then on Aug 25, 2026, in the test it shared with Grok, it built the cheapest complete match tracker of the field.
That last result is the direct comparison. Both models built a complete match tracker on Aug 25, 2026. Grok 4.6's had every asked piece, and dozens of failed build actions made it one of the slowest and most expensive results of the test. DeepSeek V4 Pro's was the cheapest complete one. Same day, same brief, one app at the top of the cost range and one at the bottom. Grok 4.6's answer is thoroughness elsewhere: it kept every one of 32 sign-up answers and landed both follow-up edits, a ranked heroes page and a text score field with next-step suggestions. Where it falls short of V4 Pro is the shape of what it leaves behind. Ten projects for one form is harder to read and harder to automate than two, and V4 Pro's record is built on tidy, deep workspaces.
Grok Build 0.1 is the honest miss on the Grok side. In the same Aug 25, 2026 test it produced no app. It described every layer of the build, then repeated the same failed step hundreds of times until the test was stopped. Every Grok result on this page belongs to Grok 4.6.
Choose Grok If…
A comparison that never concedes anything is not worth reading. Grok is the better pick in several common cases.
- A long, detailed build has to finish with every answer kept. Grok 4.6 saved all 32 answers of the client sign-up form on Aug 25, 2026, the same day DeepSeek V4 Flash's long-form build ran out of time. If the form must arrive complete and price is not the constraint, this is the standing evidence.
- Every asked piece has to be there on the first run. The match tracker Grok 4.6 built had every piece the brief asked for, and both follow-up edits landed on top of it (Aug 25, 2026). Thoroughness is its habit.
- Your prompts are long and repeated. Grok 4.6 offers a 500K-token context, and cached input bills at $0.50 per million against $2.00 uncached under a 200K prompt (as of Sep 2026). A prompt you reuse across many calls gets much cheaper on the second pass.
- You already build on xAI's line. If your team is on xAI's API, Grok 4.6 is the version with finished apps on record.
Choose DeepSeek If…
- A complete app at the lowest cost is the job. On Aug 25, 2026, DeepSeek V4 Pro built the cheapest complete match tracker of the test, the same test where Grok 4.6 was one of the most expensive.
- Visual polish on a budget is the job. Aug 1, 2026 is the standing evidence: the cheapest model in the test produced the best-looking app.
- You are wiring up a lot of your data. The record 60 fields and 8 automations of Aug 6, 2026 are the most of your data any model has wired up for us.
- Your volume is high and your budget is tight. DeepSeek's published rate card is the cheapest on this page, and off-peak billing is exactly half of peak. Peak is 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC on weekdays (as of Sep 2026).
- You want the weights. Both DeepSeek V4 models are MIT, code and weights alike. You can self-host, call the API, or move between them without a license renegotiation. Grok does not offer that option.
- A single step has to emit a lot at once. DeepSeek V4's 384K maximum output is the largest on this page.
The Taskade Angle: Route, Don't Standardize
Most comparison pages end with "pick one". The evidence for these two families points the other way: one finishes the long, detailed build at a high price, the other owns looks, depth, and value. Serious teams run both and route between them.
Taskade routes across 15+ frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-weight providers inside one workspace, with the AI allowance included in the subscription rather than a separate API account per lab. Paid plans start at Pro $10/mo billed annually, with Business $25, Max $100 and Enterprise $250 per month billed annually. You set the model per agent or per automation step, so a first draft on DeepSeek V4 Flash, a data-wiring pass on DeepSeek V4 Pro, and a long, detailed form on Grok 4.6 can each get the model that leads there. Leave a step on TSK-1 Auto and it adapts the depth instead: fast when the step is quick, deeper reasoning when it is not.
Four patterns that hold up:
- Cheap model drafts, thorough model finishes. First drafts and design loops on V4 Flash; the long form that has to arrive with every answer on Grok 4.6.
- Depth model wires, value model ships. A data-rich build and the lowest-cost complete tracker on V4 Pro. Reserve Grok 4.6 for the build where completeness outranks the bill.
- Every step lands in the same project graph. Whichever model runs a step, the result becomes shared workspace memory, so the next agent inherits context instead of re-deriving it.
- Scheduled automations read from the same place. Model choice becomes a per-step setting, not a platform decision.
See 10 Best Open-Source AI LLMs in 2026 for where DeepSeek sits in the wider open-weight field, and Grok vs Claude for how Grok compares against the other closed family we have tested.
Final Word: Thoroughness vs Value
Grok 4.6 is the thoroughness pick. On Aug 25, 2026 it finished every build it was given: a tracker with every asked piece, all 32 sign-up answers kept, and two follow-up edits that landed, at a pace and a price near the bottom of that test on efficiency, with the form spread across ten projects where the leader used two. DeepSeek V4 is the value pick: the cheapest complete match tracker of that same test, the best-looking app at a fraction of the field's cost on Aug 1, 2026, the cheapest and fastest run of the Aug 3, 2026 test, and the richest workspace behind an app on Aug 6, 2026, on the cheapest rates here, under an MIT license. Its one miss on the day the two met was Flash's long-form build, which ran out of time.
Neither is the winner. The winner is the setup that puts the thorough model where the long form lives and the value model where volume lives.
▲ Memory feeds Intelligence. ■ Intelligence triggers Execution. ● Execution creates Memory. One closed family, one open family. One workspace. No single point of vendor failure.
This is the origin of living software. 🌱
Build with Grok and DeepSeek in one workspace →
Related reading
- 10 Best Open-Source AI LLMs in 2026. Where DeepSeek sits in the open-weight field.
- History of AI benchmarks. Why every model claims to be best, and how TSK-1 differs.
- Grok vs Claude. Two closed families, head to head.
- Kimi vs DeepSeek. Bespoke license versus MIT, head to head.
- GLM vs DeepSeek. Two MIT-weight families from the same test.
- Multi-Model AI Access. How Taskade routes across providers.
- Multi-Agent Teams. Specialists with different model picks.
- Taskade MCP Server. Connect any MCP-compatible IDE to your workspace.
- TSK-1 Grok profile. Full evidence for the Grok family.
- TSK-1 DeepSeek profile. Full evidence for the DeepSeek family.
- TSK-1 hub. The complete model test dataset.
