DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs Llama 4 Scout

Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) by DeepSeek or Llama 4 Scout by Meta? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Clear winner

DeepSeekDeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 8.50
Total cost: $25.4

MetaLlama 4 ScoutOff the frontier

Intelligence: 6.50
Total cost: $73.6

Verdict

Pick DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)

Llama 4 Scout vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): 23.5% less intelligence, 189.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 57.3% faster end-to-end.

Metric	DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)	Llama 4 Scout	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	8.5	6.5	−23.5% Llama 4 Scout is 23.5% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$25.37	$73.56	+189.9% Llama 4 Scout is 2.9× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	11.84s	5.06s	−57.3% Llama 4 Scout is 57.3% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.32 / $0.89	$0.18 / $0.66
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

Open this matchup in the interactive picker DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): what beats it Llama 4 Scout: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Llama 4 Scout is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Llama 4 ScoutToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v3/llama-4-scout · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v3/llama-4-scout?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill