Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) by DeepSeek? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 22.1% more intelligence, 83.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 98.6% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 34.3 | +22.1% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 22.1% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $199.63 | −83.6% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 83.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.02s | 17.91s | +98.6% DeepSeek V4 Flash 073… is 98.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.14 / $0.28 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
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 Flash 0731 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) scores 41.20 for $158.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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