Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) 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.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 35.90
Total cost: $482

DeepSeekDeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.30
Total cost: $200

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… scores 1.6 points higher (35.9 vs 34.3) but costs 2.4× as much to run the benchmark ($482 vs $200; both mid-range class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max).

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)	DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	35.9	34.3	−4.5% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 4.5% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$482.13	$199.63	−58.6% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 58.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	5.73s	17.94s	+213.1% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 213.1% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.14 / $0.28
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 4.5% less intelligence, 58.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 213.1% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
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 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)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-sonnet-5-5-low/deepseek-v4-flash · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/deepseek-v4-flash?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill