Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (High) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (High)
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (High) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 17.9% more intelligence, 91.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 24.4 | +17.9% DeepSeek V4 Flash 042… is 17.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $121.20 | −91.9% DeepSeek V4 Flash 042… is 91.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.84s | Not reported | — not comparable |
| 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 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (High)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-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/deepseek-v4-flash-0420-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill