DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Claude Sonnet 5
DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $1.32 / $3.96 and Claude Sonnet 5 costs $2.00 / $10.00 per million input / output tokens. At a typical 3:1 mix, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 2.0× cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.
Input
$1.32
per 1M
Output
$3.96
per 1M
Cached
$0.044
1M context
Claude Sonnet 5
Anthropic
Input
$2.00
per 1M
Output
$10.00
per 1M
Cached
$0.20
1M context
Side by side
Green marks the cheaper price, larger context window, bigger discount or higher score.
| Detail | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input per 1M | $1.32 | $2.00 |
| Output per 1M | $3.96 | $10.00 |
| Blended per 1M (3:1) | $1.98 | $4.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.044 | $0.20 |
| Batch or off-peak discount | 50% (off-peak) | 50% (batch) |
| Long prompts | Same rate at any length | Same rate at any length |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Released | 24 Apr 2026 | 30 Jun 2026 |
| Open weights | Yes | No |
| Verified | 27 Sep 2026 | 27 Sep 2026 |
Sources: DeepSeek pricing and Anthropic pricing.
Monthly cost on three workloads
List prices, no batch discount. The cached share applies where a model has a cache rate.
| Workload | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Claude Sonnet 5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer chat assistant50,000 conversations a month, about 2,000 tokens in and 400 out each; 50% cached | $147 | $310 | $163 |
| Document Q&A (RAG)20,000 questions a month over retrieved documents, 12,000 in and 600 out; 30% cached | $272 | $470 | $198 |
| Coding agent400 tasks a month, 40 steps each with a growing context; 85% cached | $208 | $433 | $224 |
How they differ
- DeepSeek V4 Pro is cheaper on input ($1.32 vs $2).
- DeepSeek V4 Pro is cheaper on output ($3.96 vs $10), which matters most for long answers and reasoning models.
- Cached input is cheaper on DeepSeek V4 Pro ($0.044 vs $0.20), which favours agents and chat apps that resend the same context.
- Only Claude Sonnet 5 offers a batch discount for jobs that can wait.
- DeepSeek V4 Pro has open weights, so you can also run it yourself or choose between hosts.
Recent changes
All changes- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash replaced V4 Flash at $0.30 / $1.20 peak ($0.15 / $0.60 off-peak).
- DeepSeek V4 Pro moved to peak and off-peak pricing: $1.32 / $3.96 at peak, down from $1.74 on input and up from $3.48 on output.
- DeepSeek discontinued the deepseek-chat (V3.2) and deepseek-reasoner (R1) endpoints.
- ▼ 33%Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 5 at $2 / $10, cheaper than Sonnet 4.6's $3 / $15.
- Anthropic retired Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4.
