Which model is better: Claude 4 Opus or DeepSeek R1?
DeepSeek R1 is 96.3% cheaper for input tokens ($0.55 vs. $15.00 per 1M tokens) and $2.19 vs. $75.00 for output tokens (27.3x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Claude 4 Opus delivers lower response latency at 920ms TTFT (530ms faster than DeepSeek R1) with 46 vs. 58 tok/s throughput. Claude 4 Opus leads coding evaluations at 77.2% SWE-bench Verified vs. 49.2% for DeepSeek R1 and 87.1% vs. 71.5% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.
Zero-Shot RAG Verified
Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)
Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.
Metric / Dimension
Claude 4 Opus
DeepSeek R1
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$15.00
$0.55
DeepSeek R1 is 27.3x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$75.00
$2.19
DeepSeek R1 (97.1% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$1.500
$0.140
DeepSeek R1 is 10.7x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$18.75
$0.55
DeepSeek R1 is 34.1x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output)
205k (64k out)
131k (33k out)
Claude 4 Opus (1.6x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency
920ms
1450ms
Claude 4 Opus (530ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
46 tok/s
58 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 (+12 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
77.2%
49.2%
Claude 4 Opus (+28.0% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
87.1%
71.5%
Claude 4 Opus (+15.6% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
91.8%
84%
Claude 4 Opus (+7.8% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
98.1%
97.3%
Claude 4 Opus (+0.8% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
43.6 / 100
64.8 / 100
DeepSeek R1 (+21.2 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
DeepSeek R1 is cheaper at $0.55/1M input tokens ($2.19/1M output) compared to $15.00/1M input ($75.00/1M output) for Claude 4 Opus.
Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 4 Opus or DeepSeek R1?
Claude 4 Opus delivers faster first-token latency at 920ms TTFT (46 tok/s throughput) compared to 1450ms TTFT (58 tok/s) for DeepSeek R1.
How do Claude 4 Opus and DeepSeek R1 compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 4 Opus scores 77.2% versus 49.2% for DeepSeek R1. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 4 Opus scores 87.1% versus 71.5% for DeepSeek R1 (and 98.1% vs 97.3% on MATH-500).
When should you choose Claude 4 Opus?
Choose Claude 4 Opus (Anthropic) for mission-critical R&D, long-horizon autonomous coding tasks, complex theorem proving, and executive strategic synthesis — offering a 204k context window, 920ms TTFT, and $15.00/1M input pricing ($1.500/1M cached reads).
When should you choose DeepSeek R1?
Choose DeepSeek R1 (DeepSeek) for open-weight chain-of-thought reasoning, synthetic data distillation, and complex mathematical verification — offering a 131k context window, 1450ms TTFT, and $0.55/1M input pricing ($0.140/1M cached reads).
