Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (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 Flash 0420 (Max)
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 16.9% more intelligence, 90.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 366.9% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 24.2 | +16.9% DeepSeek V4 Flash 042… is 16.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $149.48 | −90.0% DeepSeek V4 Flash 042… is 90.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 100.76s | +366.9% DeepSeek V4 Flash 042… is 366.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.11 / $0.23 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
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 Flash 0420 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max)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-flash-0420 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/deepseek-v4-flash-0420?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill