Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, 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 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 45.1 points higher (53.6 vs 8.5) but costs 86× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $25.4; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 8.5, and DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) when 8.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 8.5 | −84.1% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 84.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $25.37 | −98.8% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 98.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 11.89s | −64.8% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 64.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.32 / $0.89 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 84.1% less intelligence, 98.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 64.8% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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 Opus 5.5 (High, 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-opus-5-5-high/deepseek-v3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/deepseek-v3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill