DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
| Specification |
by DeepSeek
4 providers:
DeepSeek $0.435/$0.870
Fireworks $1.74/$3.48
Together $1.74/$3.48
DeepInfra $1.30/$2.60
|
by Anthropic
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current mid tier | Current mid tier |
| Released | Apr 24, 2026 | Jan 15, 2026 |
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $0.435/Mtok | $3.00/Mtok |
| Output | $0.870/Mtok | $15.00/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $0.544/Mtok | $6.00/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.004/Mtok | $0.300/Mtok |
| Price basis | 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 |
text
|
textimage
|
| Benchmarks source: Vellum LLM Leaderboard | ||
| Avg benchmark score | 73.5 | 70.4 |
| Perf / dollar | 135.2 | 11.7 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.1 | 89.9 |
| LiveCodeBench | 93.5 | 72.4 |
| MCP Atlas | 73.6 | 69.5 |
| BrowseComp | 83.4 | 76.2 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 48.2 | 19.1 |
| ARC-AGI 2 | 30 | 58.3 |
| AIME 2025 | 75 | 83 |
| MMMLU | 82 | 89.3 |
| HumanEval | 80.6 | 79.6 |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 80.6 vendor | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | — | 59.1 |
| OSWorld-Verified | — | 78.5 |
| BFCL | 72 | — |
| MATH 500 | 80 | — |
| AutoBench | — | 5.3 |
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| AA Intelligence Index | 53.2 | 48.4 |
| AA Agentic Index | 49.6 | 42.1 |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | 0.8 | 12.2 |
| LMSYS Chatbot Arena | 1458.2 ELO | 1472 ELO |
| GDPval-AA v2 | 1590 ELO | — |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
DeepSeek — $0.435/$0.870/Mtok
Fireworks — $1.74/$3.48/Mtok
Together — $1.74/$3.48/Mtok
DeepInfra — $1.30/$2.60/Mtok
|
Anthropic — $3.00/$15.00/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $0.54 | $6 | $5.46 (91%) |
| 10M tokens | $5.44 | $60 | $54.56 (90.9%) |
| 100M tokens | $54.37 | $600 | $545.63 (90.9%) |
| 1000M tokens | $543.75 | $6000 | $5456.25 (90.9%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above- cost dominates: $0.544/Mtok blended vs $6.00 — 90.9% 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
- raw capability matters more than price: 73.5 vs 70.4 average benchmark score
- provider flexibility: available from 4 providers, so you can price-shop hosts or fail over
- this pairing gives Claude Sonnet 4.6 no edge on price, context, cache discount, or measured performance — pick it only for qualitative fit (ecosystem, compliance, model behavior on your prompts)
The cheaper option here — DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $0.544/Mtok blended on DeepSeek.
Summary
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.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 by Anthropic costs $3.00/Mtok input and $15.00/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image input.
On a blended cost basis, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 90.9% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.6.
On benchmarks, DeepSeek V4 Pro scores higher (73.5 vs 70.4) on average. In terms of value, DeepSeek V4 Pro has better performance per dollar (135.2 vs 11.7).
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.