Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max)
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 60.5% more intelligence, 63.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 75.0% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 45.1 | +60.5% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1… is 60.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $444.60 | −63.5% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1… is 63.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.27s | 16.22s | +75.0% DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1… is 75.0% slower |
| 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 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (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-medium/deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill