Dev.to
7/14/2026
Benchmarking Chinese AI APIs: DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, and GLM compared on price and performance
Original: I Spent a Month Testing Chinese AI APIs — Here's What Actually Wins
Short summary
An indie hacker compares four major Chinese AI model families — DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, and GLM — across price, code generation, language quality, speed, and vision capabilities after a month of real-world testing. DeepSeek V4 Flash emerges as the standout at $0.25/M output tokens, delivering ~95% of GPT-4o quality at 2.5% of the cost. The article includes a comparison table, per-model breakdowns, and code samples for API integration via a unified endpoint.
- •DeepSeek V4 Flash at $0.25/M tokens is the best overall value, matching GPT-4o quality for most tasks at a fraction of cost
- •Qwen offers the most model variety and strong multimodal support; Kimi and GLM excel at Chinese-language tasks
- •All four Chinese APIs are OpenAI-compatible, making switching straightforward for existing codebases
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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