Claude Sonnet 5 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
| Specification |
by Anthropic
|
by DeepSeek
4 providers:
DeepSeek $0.435/$0.870
Fireworks $1.74/$3.48
Together $1.74/$3.48
DeepInfra $1.30/$2.60
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current mid tier | Current mid tier |
| Released | Jun 30, 2026 | Apr 24, 2026 |
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $2.00/Mtok | $0.435/Mtok |
| Output | $10.00/Mtok | $0.870/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $4.00/Mtok | $0.544/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.200/Mtok | $0.004/Mtok |
| Price basis | Standard pricing, per 1M tokens — not a promotional rate. $2/$10 was announced at launch as introductory pricing through Aug 31 2026, but Anthropic's pricing page now states that it "is now the standard price" and that "the previously scheduled increase to $3/$15 per million input/output tokens on September 1, 2026 will not occur". There is therefore no reversion date to watch. Verified 2026-08-13 against platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing. | Correct as published today. DeepSeek has announced that from 16:00 UTC on 2026-08-16 this model moves to peak/off-peak billing: peak $1.32 input / $0.044 cached input / $3.96 output per 1M tokens, off-peak exactly half ($0.66 / $0.022 / $1.98). Peak hours are 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC; every other hour is off-peak. This row tracks the flat rate DeepSeek charges until that moment, and switches to the peak rate when it takes effect. |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Parameters | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
textimage
|
text
|
| Benchmarks source: Vellum LLM Leaderboard | ||
| Avg benchmark score | 81.5 | 73.5 |
| Perf / dollar | 20.4 | 135.2 |
| GPQA Diamond | 96.2 | 90.1 |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 85.2 | 80.6 vendor |
| BrowseComp | 84.7 | 83.4 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 57.4 | 48.2 |
| HumanEval | 85.2 | 80.6 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4 | — |
| LiveCodeBench | — | 93.5 |
| MCP Atlas | — | 73.6 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2 | — |
| ARC-AGI 2 | — | 30 |
| AIME 2025 | — | 75 |
| MMMLU | — | 82 |
| BFCL | — | 72 |
| MATH 500 | — | 80 |
| AutoBench | 13.5 | — |
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| AA Intelligence Index | 55.3 | 53.2 |
| AA Agentic Index | 49.7 | 49.6 |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | 16.4 | 0.8 |
| GDPval-AA v2 | 1598.2 ELO | 1590 ELO |
| LMSYS Chatbot Arena | — | 1458.2 ELO |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Anthropic — $2.00/$10.00/Mtok
|
DeepSeek — $0.435/$0.870/Mtok
Fireworks — $1.74/$3.48/Mtok
Together — $1.74/$3.48/Mtok
DeepInfra — $1.30/$2.60/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | Claude Sonnet 5 | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $4 | $0.54 | $3.46 (86.5%) |
| 10M tokens | $40 | $5.44 | $34.56 (86.4%) |
| 100M tokens | $400 | $54.37 | $345.63 (86.4%) |
| 1000M tokens | $4000 | $543.75 | $3456.25 (86.4%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above- raw capability matters more than price: 81.5 vs 73.5 average benchmark score
- cost dominates: $0.544/Mtok blended vs $4.00 — 86.4% less on the same 50/50 token mix
- your workload re-reads context (agents, RAG, long chats): cached input costs $0.004/Mtok — 99% off its list input price
- provider flexibility: available from 4 providers, so you can price-shop hosts or fail over
The cheaper option here — DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $0.544/Mtok blended on DeepSeek.
Summary
Claude Sonnet 5 by Anthropic costs $2.00/Mtok input and $10.00/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image input.
DeepSeek V4 Pro by DeepSeek costs $0.435/Mtok input and $0.870/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text input and is available from 4 providers.
On a blended cost basis, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 86.4% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.
On benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher (81.5 vs 73.5) on average. In terms of value, DeepSeek V4 Pro has better performance per dollar (135.2 vs 20.4).
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.