Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

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

Intelligence: 53.40
Total cost: $13129

DeepSeekDeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 8.50
Total cost: $25.4

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 44.9 points higher (53.4 vs 8.5) but costs 517× as much to run the benchmark ($13129 vs $25.4; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 8.5, and DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) when 8.5 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)	DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.4	8.5	−84.1% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 84.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$13,128.86	$25.37	−99.8% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 99.8% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	224.39s	13.85s	−93.8% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 93.8% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.32 / $0.89
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): 84.1% less intelligence, 99.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 93.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)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/deepseek-v3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/deepseek-v3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill