Which model is better: Claude 4 Opus or DeepSeek V3?
DeepSeek V3 is 99.1% cheaper for input tokens ($0.14 vs. $15.00 per 1M tokens) and $0.28 vs. $75.00 for output tokens (107.1x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, DeepSeek V3 delivers lower response latency at 410ms TTFT (510ms faster than Claude 4 Opus) with 78 vs. 46 tok/s throughput. Claude 4 Opus leads coding evaluations at 77.2% SWE-bench Verified vs. 42.0% for DeepSeek V3 and 87.1% vs. 59.1% 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 V3
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$15.00
$0.14
DeepSeek V3 is 107.1x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$75.00
$0.28
DeepSeek V3 (99.6% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$1.500
$0.014
DeepSeek V3 is 107.1x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$18.75
$0.14
DeepSeek V3 is 133.9x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output)
205k (64k out)
131k (8k out)
Claude 4 Opus (1.6x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency
920ms
410ms
DeepSeek V3 (510ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
46 tok/s
78 tok/s
DeepSeek V3 (+32 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
77.2%
42%
Claude 4 Opus (+35.2% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
87.1%
59.1%
Claude 4 Opus (+28.0% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
91.8%
75.9%
Claude 4 Opus (+15.9% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
98.1%
90.2%
Claude 4 Opus (+7.9% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
43.6 / 100
75 / 100
DeepSeek V3 (+31.4 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
DeepSeek V3 is cheaper at $0.14/1M input tokens ($0.28/1M 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 V3?
DeepSeek V3 delivers faster first-token latency at 410ms TTFT (78 tok/s throughput) compared to 920ms TTFT (46 tok/s) for Claude 4 Opus.
How do Claude 4 Opus and DeepSeek V3 compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 4 Opus scores 77.2% versus 42% for DeepSeek V3. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 4 Opus scores 87.1% versus 59.1% for DeepSeek V3 (and 98.1% vs 90.2% 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 V3?
Choose DeepSeek V3 (DeepSeek) for cost-sensitive batch text processing, drafting, and open-weight self-hosted inference — offering a 131k context window, 410ms TTFT, and $0.14/1M input pricing ($0.014/1M cached reads).
