Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 19.3% more intelligence, 84.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 86.6% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 24.7 | +19.3% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 19.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $238.91 | −84.1% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 84.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.71s | 2.90s | −86.6% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 86.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.30 / $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 (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/deepseek-v4-1-flash-non-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/deepseek-v4-1-flash-non-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill