Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 9.3 points higher (20.7 vs 11.4) but costs 3.3× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $461; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 11.4, and DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) when 11.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 11.4 | −44.9% DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is 44.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $460.74 | −69.3% DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is 69.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.53s | 20.14s | −6.5% DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is 6.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $2.00 / $4.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 44.9% less intelligence, 69.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 6.5% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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