Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 14.0% more intelligence, 95.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 82.1% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 34.3 | +14.0% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 14.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $199.63 | −95.9% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 95.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 101.20s | 18.12s | −82.1% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 82.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.14 / $0.28 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) scores 41.20 for $158.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/deepseek-v4-flash · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/deepseek-v4-flash?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill