Claude Opus 4.1 vs DeepSeek V3
Updated October 21, 2026. 11 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Claude Opus 4.1 scores 27.2 and DeepSeek V3 70.2 on the Vibe Coding Index, but no coding benchmark measured both, so the gap is directional, not a ranking.
Pick Claude Opus 4.1 when the context window is larger, 200K against 164K tokens, or when what matters is GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) or OTIS Mock AIME, where it leads; pick DeepSeek V3 when output tokens cost 72.9x less.
- Shared results
- 11
- Claude Opus 4.1 only
- 60
- DeepSeek V3 only
- 2
- Like-for-like categories
- 4 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, four public coding benchmarks
No call
27.2 against 70.2, from different benchmarks with none in common.
Directional only
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.1 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 22.8.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.1 has a GPQA Diamond result, 76.3%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.1 has a AIME result, 78.2%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.1 has a MMLU Pro result, 87.9%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Claude Opus 4.1
Claude Opus 4.1 leads, 1177 against 1120.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Claude Opus 4.1
Claude Opus 4.1 takes 200K tokens against 164K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
DeepSeek V3
Claude Opus 4.1 $0.052, DeepSeek V3 $0.0008 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Claude Opus 4.1 27.2 from 1 benchmark, DeepSeek V3 70.2 from 1 benchmark.
- Widest category
- Math, 20.0 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- Design Arena: SVG: Claude Opus 4.1 1152 against DeepSeek V3 976, 22.0 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Claude Opus 4.1 $75.00 against DeepSeek V3 $1.0287 per million output tokens, 72.9x apart.
- Context window
- Claude Opus 4.1 takes 200K tokens, DeepSeek V3 164K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.1 | Bars | DeepSeek V3 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 1 | 0 | ||
| Math | 1 | 0 | ||
| Web design | 7 | 0 | ||
| General | 2 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 11 | 0 |
CodingDirectional onlyFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index10 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | Not measured | 70.2% | Only DeepSeek V3 measured |
| SWE-bench Lite | Not measured | 30.7% | Only DeepSeek V3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1390 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 66.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Terminal-Bench | 38.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| WeirdML | 45.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Cybench | 42.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1479 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1456 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1399 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 28 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 22.8 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 144.1 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index3 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| METR time horizons | 66.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| GDPval | 43.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 48.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 36 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 77.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 77.3% | 71.2% | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| SimpleBench | 60.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 21.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| EBR-bench | 7.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| VPCT | 35.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1442 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1438 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1451 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 78.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | 95.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 94.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 68.9% | 48.9% | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 12.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 2.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1431 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1434 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 87.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 83.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 73.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 61.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 93.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 47.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1422 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1416 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1421 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1406 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index70
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1177 | 1120 | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1164 | 1093 | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1172 | 1054 | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1166 | 1089 | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1153 | 1087 | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1171 | 1108 | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1152 | 976 | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1167 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 31.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 73.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| DTBench | 80.0% | 62.7% | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| LMCA | 37.1% | 15.2% | Claude Opus 4.1 |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 84.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1419 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1435 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1412 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1433 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1405 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1427 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1413 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1377 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1381 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1433 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1448 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1422 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1413 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1444 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1455 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1418 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1398 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.1 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 24 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
DeepSeek V3 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
DeepSeek V3 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
DeepSeek V3 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Anthropic Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek V3 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | DeepSeek |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | August 5, 2025 | December 26, 2024 |
| Context window | 200K | 164K |
| Input $/Mtok | $15.00 | $0.2574 |
| Output $/Mtok | $75.00 | $1.0287 |
| Coding index | 27.2 | 70.2 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 1 | 1 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Claude Opus 4.1 better than DeepSeek V3 for coding?
Claude Opus 4.1 scores 27.2 and DeepSeek V3 70.2 on the Vibe Coding Index, but no coding benchmark measured both, so the gap is directional, not a ranking. Pick Claude Opus 4.1 when the context window is larger, 200K against 164K tokens, or when what matters is GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) or OTIS Mock AIME, where it leads; pick DeepSeek V3 when output tokens cost 72.9x less.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.1 or DeepSeek V3?
Claude Opus 4.1 costs $15.00 per million input tokens and $75.00 per million output tokens; DeepSeek V3 costs $0.2574 and $1.0287. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 4.1 or DeepSeek V3?
Claude Opus 4.1, with 200K tokens against 164K.
How many benchmarks is the Claude Opus 4.1 vs DeepSeek V3 comparison based on?
11 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Opus 4.1's coding index rests on 1 independent benchmark and DeepSeek V3's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.