Claude Sonnet 5 (High) vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (High) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) 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 Sonnet 5 (High) scores 23.2 points higher (31.7 vs 8.5) but costs 82× as much to run the benchmark ($2086 vs $25.4; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (High) when you need intelligence above 8.5, and DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) when 8.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (High) | DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 31.7 | 8.5 | −73.2% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 73.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,086.04 | $25.37 | −98.8% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 98.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.79s | 11.84s | −19.9% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 19.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.32 / $0.89 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (High): 73.2% less intelligence, 98.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 19.9% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Claude Sonnet 5 (High)DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)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-5-high/deepseek-v3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-high/deepseek-v3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill