u/Temporary-Leek6861

deepseek v4 pro and flash both dropped today. 1M token context, open source, pricing expected to be way under claude/gpt based on deepseek's history.

plugged my deepseek api key into betterclaw free plan to test v4-flash on my telegram bot. first impressions: fast, no language mixing issues like minimax, tool calling seems reliable on simple tasks.

haven't tested pro yet but the benchmarks look strong for agent work (80.6% SWE-Bench). flash seems perfect for routine agent stuff at whatever the pricing lands.

heads up for anyone testing: if you try v4 pro with thinking mode on self-hosted openclaw you'll hit a 400 error on the second message. the reasoning_content field doesn't get passed back. betterclaw handles this at their backend apparently so no issues there. one of those provider compatibility things.

will report back after running it for a few days. anyone else testing v4 today?

tracked everything for a month running the same telegram support bot across three setups:

self-hosted openclaw on hetzner: $4.49 VPS + ~$45 api costs (deepseek primary, claude for reasoning) + roughly 6 hours maintenance in april (CVE patching, debugging telegram 409 loop, fixing broken update). call it $50-80/mo plus your time

openclaw launch: $3/mo + included credits covered basic tasks. ~$12-15 total. limited features but way less headache

betterclaw free: $0 platform + ~$8 byok api costs for same workload on deepseek. limited to 100 tasks/mo and 1 agent and 7 day memory. but for a basic support bot plenty

the 'free' self-hosted option was the most expensive by far. not counting the anthropic pricing cutoff where people went from $20 to $400+ overnight

not saying self-hosting is wrong. just go in with realistic cost expectations