
Real head-to-head · same prompt, one shot
Fugu Ultra vs DeepSeek V4 Flash
Sakana's multi-agent answer to Fusion — frontier ensemble without single-vendor risk. vs DeepSeek's cheap tier, retrained for agents — same size, sharper loops.
What I tested — same prompt, two models
I run the same fixed prompt set through every new model the day it drops — same string, one shot, single HTML file out — and I score the result 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. Below is what came out when I gave the exact same prompts to Fugu Ultra and DeepSeek V4 Flash, side by side, on 42 shared tasks inside the Agent Operating System.
Both models were given identical prompts inside the Agent Operating System — no help, no iteration, no "best of N" tricks. I run each prompt once, save the HTML file the model produces, and score it 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The scoring is mine. The verdicts below are pulled from my source comparison guides at agentos.guide where I publish every score and the reasoning behind it.
Fugu Ultra · Dispatched from Agent OS as the panel-ensemble alternative to OpenRouter Fusion. Bench scored by Claude judge against the same 42 prompts as every other model.
DeepSeek V4 Flash · Wired into the Agent OS three ways: a `deepseek` Hermes profile, the DeepSeek Coder tab (official API, V4 Flash 0731 / V4 Pro picker, live preview), and the OpenCode model dropdown. Benched on all 50 GoldieBench tasks via api.deepseek.com — the endpoint the 0731 beta shipped on — with the skill-infused threejs-game-director prompt on game tasks and a model-driven fix round on any build that failed the render check.
Side-by-side on 50 shared tasks
Click any cell to play that model's actual one-shot attempt. Medals are derived from my 0–10 scores per task (highest = 🥇, second = 🥈, third = 🥉).
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DeepSeek V4 Flash
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Strengths & weaknesses I logged
Fugu Ultra
Strengths
- SWE Bench Pro 73.7 · GPQA-D 95.5 · MRCRv2 93.6 — Sakana's published frontier-tier benchmark scores
- Vendor-agnostic ensemble — opt out of specific providers for compliance / export-control
- OpenAI-compatible API at api.sakana.ai — drop-in for existing tooling
Trade-offs
- Panel orchestration adds latency — even a 'pong' burns ~2k orchestration tokens
- Newer than Fusion; less community calibration on long-tail prompts
DeepSeek V4 Flash
Strengths
- 50/50 one-shot builds returned complete, valid, closing HTML — zero truncations
- 42/50 rendered clean first time; all 8 dark builds were repaired by the model itself in one fix round
- 1M-token context on the cheap tier — whole codebases fit in a single call
Trade-offs
- Unranked — the 50 builds are on the bench but not yet scored by the Opus vision judge
- Reasons at length before writing (a full 3D game build ran ~4-8 minutes), so it is not a fast-draft model
- 8 of 50 first-pass builds rendered black or near-black before the fix round
Pricing & context — the spec sheet
| Spec | Fugu Ultra | DeepSeek V4 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Sakana AI | DeepSeek |
| Context window | 272,000 tokens with the standard rate. Calls exceeding 272K context are billed at the higher 'long-context' rates. | 1,000,000-token context window |
| Price | $5 / 1M input · $30 / 1M output (Fugu Ultra) | API · cheap tier |
| Pricing detail | Sakana's multi-agent orchestration: a single API call internally dispatches to multiple frontier models and synthesises the answer. Subscription plans run $20-$200/mo (Standard / Pro / Max); PAYG is $5/M input + $30/M output for Fugu Ultra. Direct competitor to OpenRouter Fusion's panel approach. | Benched on the DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 public beta, launched 2026-07-31 on DeepSeek's official API. DeepSeek describe it as a major upgrade to agent capabilities whose benchmark scores now surpass their previous V4-Pro-Preview, using the exact same model architecture and size as the preview — the gain is post-training, not scale. Natively supports the Responses API format and is adapted for Codex-style coding loops. Benched against api.deepseek.com directly because third-party routes list "v4-flash" undated and may still serve the older preview build. |
| Release | 2026-06-15 | 2026-07 |
| Bench coverage | 42/42 scored · avg 7.94/10 | 0/50 scored · avg — |
The verdict — which should you pick?
Not enough scored shared tasks yet for a head-to-head average. The live demos for both are on the matrix above — play them and form your own opinion.
If you only run one of these inside your stack, the head-to-head average above is the call. If you can run both, my honest play is to wire Fugu Ultra and DeepSeek V4 Flash both into the Agent Operating System and dispatch each from the kanban by task type — teams that want fusion-class quality but need a different vendor risk profile → Fugu Ultra, long agent loops and codex-style write-run-fix work, which is what the 0731 upgrade targets → DeepSeek V4 Flash. That's the same setup I run for the 4,000+ founders inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
FAQ — Fugu Ultra vs DeepSeek V4 Flash
Which is better, Fugu Ultra or DeepSeek V4 Flash?
On Goldie Bench, Fugu Ultra averages no scored verdicts yet across the shared tasks, with 5 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze overall. DeepSeek V4 Flash averages no scored verdicts yet, with 0 gold, 0 silver, 0 bronze. Not enough scored shared tasks yet to call a winner.
How much does Fugu Ultra cost vs DeepSeek V4 Flash?
Fugu Ultra: Sakana's multi-agent orchestration: a single API call internally dispatches to multiple frontier models and synthesises the answer. Subscription plans run $20-$200/mo (Standard / Pro / Max); PAYG is $5/M input + $30/M output for Fugu Ultra. Direct competitor to OpenRouter Fusion's panel approach. DeepSeek V4 Flash: Benched on the DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 public beta, launched 2026-07-31 on DeepSeek's official API. DeepSeek describe it as a major upgrade to agent capabilities whose benchmark scores now surpass their previous V4-Pro-Preview, using the exact same model architecture and size as the preview — the gain is post-training, not scale. Natively supports the Responses API format and is adapted for Codex-style coding loops. Benched against api.deepseek.com directly because third-party routes list "v4-flash" undated and may still serve the older preview build.
What's the context window for Fugu Ultra vs DeepSeek V4 Flash?
Fugu Ultra has a 272,000 tokens with the standard rate. Calls exceeding 272K context are billed at the higher 'long-context' rates. context window. DeepSeek V4 Flash has a 1,000,000-token context window context window.
When should I pick Fugu Ultra over DeepSeek V4 Flash?
Pick Fugu Ultra for: Teams that want Fusion-class quality but need a different vendor risk profile; Operators avoiding export-controlled providers (Sakana emphasises this in their pitch); Deep-research workflows where ensemble verdicts beat single-model answers. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Panel orchestration adds latency — even a 'pong' burns ~2k orchestration tokens; Newer than Fusion; less community calibration on long-tail prompts.
When should I pick DeepSeek V4 Flash over Fugu Ultra?
Pick DeepSeek V4 Flash for: Long agent loops and Codex-style write-run-fix work, which is what the 0731 upgrade targets; Whole-repo or whole-document tasks that need the 1M context on a cheap tier; Volume build work where you would rather wait a few minutes than pay a flagship. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Unranked — the 50 builds are on the bench but not yet scored by the Opus vision judge; Reasons at length before writing (a full 3D game build ran ~4-8 minutes), so it is not a fast-draft model; 8 of 50 first-pass builds rendered black or near-black before the fix round.
How does Goldie Bench score Fugu Ultra vs DeepSeek V4 Flash?
Every demo on this page was built by Julian Goldie inside the Agent Operating System — same fixed prompt for both models, one shot, single HTML file out. Each result gets a 0–10 score on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The highest score on each task gets gold; second gets silver; third gets bronze. See methodology for full provenance.
Related comparisons
Other head-to-heads using the same scoring system:
Fugu Ultra vs Fusion DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Fusion Fugu Ultra vs Claude Opus 5 DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Claude Opus 5 Fugu Ultra vs Hermes MoA DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Hermes MoA Fugu Ultra vs GPT-5.6 Sol DeepSeek V4 Flash vs GPT-5.6 SolFull model pages: Fugu Ultra · DeepSeek V4 Flash · back to the leaderboard
The same stack Julian uses
Run this stack yourself.
Every demo on this bench was built inside the Agent Operating System — one prompt, one shot, single HTML file out. The Agent OS, the prompts, the templates, the weekly walkthroughs and 4,000+ founders shipping with it every day all live inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
4,000+founders
258documented wins
38countries
$59/momonthly














































