Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 1.6% more intelligence, 63.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 68.5% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 24.7 | +1.6% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 1.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $238.91 | −63.4% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 63.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.14s | 2.88s | −68.5% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (… is 68.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
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 (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)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-non-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/deepseek-v4-1-flash-non-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill