Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max)
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 90.8% more intelligence, 55.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 28.1% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 39.5 | +90.8% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 90.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $671.96 | −55.2% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 55.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.86s | 15.00s | −28.1% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 28.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.29 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
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 V4.1 Flash (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/deepseek-v4-1-flash · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/deepseek-v4-1-flash?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill