Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 16.4 points higher (51.2 vs 34.8) but costs 1.5× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $1081; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 34.8 | −32.0% DeepSeek V4 Flash Vis… is 32.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $1,081.42 | −33.5% DeepSeek V4 Flash Vis… is 33.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.68s | 15.95s | −22.9% DeepSeek V4 Flash Vis… is 22.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.44 / $1.32 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 32.0% less intelligence, 33.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 22.9% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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