Claude Opus 4.6 vs DeepSeek V4 Flash
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.6 | DeepSeek V4 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Respan Index | 45.1 (#46) | 45.4 (#44) |
| Blended price per 1M | $10 | $0.11 |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Input / output per 1M | $5 / $25 | $0.086 / $0.18 |
| Max output | 128K | - |
| Input | text, vision | text |
| Released | 2026-02-05 | 2026-07-31 |
Respan Index by category
Each category is scored 0 to 100, and how far ahead the winner is. Leads under a point are close to even.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.6 | DeepSeek V4 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Coding | 29.5 Claude Opus 4.6 | 29.8 DeepSeek V4 Flash |
| Agents | 55.9 Claude Opus 4.6 | 58.1 DeepSeek V4 Flash |
| Reasoning | 43.2 Claude Opus 4.6 | 46.4 DeepSeek V4 Flash |
| Knowledge & language | 47.5 Claude Opus 4.6 | 35.4 DeepSeek V4 Flash |
| Human preference | 54.9 Claude Opus 4.6 | 55.3 DeepSeek V4 Flash |
Benchmarks both report
Claude Opus 4.6 leads on 13 of the 19 benchmarks both report. Higher is better. Each score links to where it was published.
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | DeepSeek V4 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles (Epoch AI) | 21% | 32% |
| LMArena Elo | 1503 | 1436 |
| LMArena WebDev (LMArena) | 1546 | 1582 |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 v2 (Epoch AI) | 26.8% | 24.4% |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 v2 (Epoch AI) | 66% | 57.5% |
| GPQA Diamond | 91.3% | 91% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding (LiveBench) | 49% | 46.8% |
| LiveBench Coding (LiveBench) | 78.2% | 75% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis (LiveBench) | 69.9% | 79.3% |
| LiveBench Instruction Following (LiveBench) | 63.3% | 65.5% |
| LiveBench Language (LiveBench) | 83.3% | 79.2% |
| LiveBench Mathematics (LiveBench) | 89.3% | 86.8% |
| LiveBench Reasoning (LiveBench) | 88.7% | 86.6% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles (Epoch AI) | 25% | 34% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 (Epoch AI) | 94.4% | 94.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 47% | 33.6% |
| WeirdML (Håvard Tveit Ihle) | 78% | 63% |
| AIME 2026 | 96.7% | 95.8% |
| SimpleBench (SimpleBench) | 67.6% | 61.1% |
FAQ
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than DeepSeek V4 Flash?
DeepSeek V4 Flash scores 45.4 on the Respan Index (#44), ahead of Claude Opus 4.6 at 45.1 (#46). Claude Opus 4.6 leads on 13 of the 19 benchmarks both report.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or DeepSeek V4 Flash?
Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 input and $25 output per 1M tokens; DeepSeek V4 Flash at $0.086 and $0.18. DeepSeek V4 Flash is 91x cheaper per token at list price.
Which has the larger context window?
Both accept 1M tokens of context.