Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) 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.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 51.20
Total cost: $5242

DeepSeekDeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 24.70
Total cost: $194

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallbac… scores 26.5 points higher (51.2 vs 24.7) but costs 27× as much to run the benchmark ($5242 vs $194; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 24.7, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) when 24.7 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback)	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	51.2	24.7	−51.8% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 51.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$5,241.59	$193.84	−96.3% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 96.3% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.41s	2.91s	−89.8% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 89.8% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.30 / $1.20
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback): 51.8% less intelligence, 96.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 89.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback): what beats it DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Terra (Medium) scores 41.30 for $175.

Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback)DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)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-fable-5-1-high/deepseek-v4-1-flash-non-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-high/deepseek-v4-1-flash-non-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill