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Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs DeepSeek V3
A detailed comparison of Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) and DeepSeek V3 (DeepSeek) across pricing, performance, and features.
Pricing Comparison
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | DeepSeek V3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $3.00 | $0.14 | -95% |
| Output / 1M tokens | $15.00 | $0.28 | -98% |
| Context window | 200K | 164K | — |
| Max output | 16K | 16.384K | — |
Benchmark Comparison
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | DeepSeek V3 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 86% | 78% |
| HumanEval | 94% | 89% |
| GPQA | 70% | — |
Capabilities
| Capability | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | DeepSeek V3 |
|---|---|---|
| code | ✓ | ✓ |
| reasoning | ✓ | ✓ |
| text | ✓ | ✓ |
| tool-use | ✓ | ✗ |
| vision | ✓ | ✗ |
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Strengths
- ✓Opus 4.5 quality at 1/5th the cost
- ✓Best value for production workloads
- ✓1M context in beta
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Weaknesses
- ✗Long context pricing doubles above 200K
- ✗Slightly below Opus 4.6 on hardest tasks
DeepSeek V3 Strengths
- ✓Cheapest capable model available
- ✓Strong coding performance
- ✓Open-source
DeepSeek V3 Weaknesses
- ✗No vision support
- ✗Smaller context than competitors
- ✗China-based — availability concerns
Quick Verdict
Best value: DeepSeek V3 is the more affordable option at $0.14/$0.28 per 1M tokens.
Higher benchmarks: DeepSeek V3 scores higher on average across available benchmarks (83.5% avg).
Larger context: Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports 200K tokens.
Choose DeepSeek V3 if cost matters most. Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need the best possible quality for complex tasks.