Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (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
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) scores 15.2 points higher (39.5 vs 24.3) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($672 vs $653; both premium class). Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Low).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 39.5 | +62.6% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 62.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $671.96 | +3.0% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 3.0% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.46s | 15.00s | +77.3% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 77.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.29 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 62.6% more intelligence, 3.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (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-5-low/deepseek-v4-1-flash · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/deepseek-v4-1-flash?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill