Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) 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 (Medium) scores 33.4 points higher (44.8 vs 11.4) but costs 5.9× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $461; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 11.4, and DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) when 11.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 11.4 | −74.6% DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is 74.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $460.74 | −83.1% DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is 83.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.14s | 20.20s | +53.7% DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is 53.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $2.00 / $4.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium): 74.6% less intelligence, 83.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 53.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
- DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude Opus 5 (Medium)DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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