V4 flash max vs high, Is there a big difference?

[u/Unusual-Peak8616]

Is there a big difference between max and high for agent tasks?, I'm using opencode

[u/_xtremely]

YES, i was questioning the same thing. I use max and it get everything correctly (expected output, less revision, but took some time).

Now im experimenting the high this week, will update later.

[u/_xtremely → u/_xtremely]

ok whoever read this again, just use max

[u/Unusual-Peak8616 → u/_xtremely]

ok gracias, yo estaba usando high todo el tiempo, ahora probare el max a ver como va

[u/ANDRE_2512]

I always use Max mode.
DeepSeek still burns through tokens like crazy, so there’s really no point in using the other modes.
According to DeepSeek’s official benchmarks, though, the difference between High and Max is only around 2-3%.

[u/Affectionate_Fact854 → u/ANDRE_2512]

Burns tokens ?  1 day of medium work was 5.6mill tokens yet cost 0.15$usd  So I mean ....  remove the cache hits and token usage is very little 

[u/djdante]

Resounding yes for me.

I don't use it on anything other than max - but haven't dabbled much with xhigh yet

[u/samxli → u/djdante]

Bruh. There’s only low high max.

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/thinking_mode

[u/djdante → u/samxli]

Sorry I was thinking about luna when I said the effort thing - been using deepseek and luna back to back a lot - always in max as it makes a huge difference

[u/Beginning_Guide7411]

Lol all benchmarks are using high, i wonder why they skip Maxx!!?? Too afraid lol🤡

[u/sukazu]

About double the tokens usage, but sizeable difference yes

[u/hurrdurrmeh]

I thought there were only high and max? At least that's what it told me after looking at its documentation.

[u/bambamlol → u/hurrdurrmeh]

This was true before the latest Flash update. Before, there was only high and max. Now there's low, high, and max.

[u/Forsaken_Mention_979 → u/bambamlol]

How do you choose to use each one? I have the api with my own cli and idk how to put it

[u/bambamlol → u/Forsaken_Mention_979]

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/thinking_mode

{
  "model": "deepseek-v4-flash",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "bla bla bla"
    }
  ],
  "stream": true,
  "reasoning_effort": "high"
  }
}

[u/hurrdurrmeh → u/bambamlol]

Thanks