AI Models · Compare
Claude 4 Sonnet vs DeepSeek R1
Side-by-side intelligence, speed, price, benchmarks, strengths and weaknesses.
Anthropic
Claude 4 Sonnet
ProprietaryFeb 2026
The Anthropic sweet spot — Opus-class coding at a fraction of the price.
DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1
Open sourceJan 2025
Open-weights reasoning model that matches o1 at 1/25 the price.
Head to head
Spec
Claude 4 Sonnet
DeepSeek R1
Intelligence index↑ better
Winner75
73
Speed↑ better
Winner95 tok/s
60 tok/s
Time to first token↓ better
Winner0.85 s
1.5 s
Context window↑ better
Winner500k
128k
Max output↑ better
16k
Winner33k
Input price↓ better
$3.00 / 1M tokens
Winner$0.55 / 1M tokens
Output price↓ better
$15.00 / 1M tokens
Winner$2.19 / 1M tokens
Blended price↓ better
$6.00 / 1M tokens
Winner$0.96 / 1M tokens
License
Proprietary
Open source
Input modalities
text, image
text
Output modalities
text
text
Benchmark showdown
MMLU
Claude 4 Sonnet
88.5
DeepSeek R1
87.1
MMLU Pro
Claude 4 Sonnet
75.2
DeepSeek R1
75.9
GPQA
Claude 4 Sonnet
58.0
DeepSeek R1
71.5
MATH
Claude 4 Sonnet
82.0
DeepSeek R1
90.2
HumanEval
Claude 4 Sonnet
93.2
DeepSeek R1
91.0
Strengths, weaknesses and best-for
Claude 4 Sonnet
Strengths
- Best $/HumanEval ratio
- Fast
- 500k context
Weaknesses
- Behind Opus on hardest reasoning
Best for
- Production coding tools
- Long-context RAG
- Tool use
DeepSeek R1
Strengths
- Reasoning at GPT-class scores
- Open weights
- Cheap
Weaknesses
- Slower than non-reasoning peers
Best for
- Self-hosted reasoning
- Math & code
- Cost-sensitive agents
Quick verdict
- Pick Claude 4 Sonnet if you want it smarter, faster and longer context.
- Pick DeepSeek R1 if you want it cheaper.
Auto-generated from the spec sheet. Always validate on your own evals.
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