Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) scores 19.6 points higher (28.1 vs 8.5) but costs 48× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $25.4; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 8.5, and DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) when 8.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 8.5 | −69.8% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 69.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $25.37 | −97.9% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 97.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.02s | 11.89s | +31.8% DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is 31.8% slower |
| 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 (Medium): 69.8% less intelligence, 97.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 31.8% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) 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 (Medium)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-medium/deepseek-v3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/deepseek-v3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill