Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Medium) 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 (Medium) scores 10.0 points higher (44.8 vs 34.8) but costs 2.5× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $1081; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 34.8 | −22.3% DeepSeek V4 Flash Vis… is 22.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $1,081.42 | −60.4% DeepSeek V4 Flash Vis… is 60.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.73s | 15.95s | +25.3% DeepSeek V4 Flash Vis… is 25.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.44 / $1.32 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium): 22.3% less intelligence, 60.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 25.3% 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 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 (Medium)DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/deepseek-v4-flash-vision · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/deepseek-v4-flash-vision?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill