Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs DeepSeek V3.2 Exp

Updated October 21, 2026. 42 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.

Replace Claude Sonnet 4.5 Replace DeepSeek V3.2 Exp

Claude Sonnet 4.5Anthropic

Coding: 59.1
Overall: 20.7
Output $/M: $15.00

DeepSeek V3.2 ExpDeepSeek

Coding: 55.0
Overall: 16.6
Output $/M: $0.41

vs boards won of 42 shared

Decision reading

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 for coding: it scores 59.1 on the Vibe Coding Index against 55.0 for DeepSeek V3.2 Exp.

Pick DeepSeek V3.2 Exp when output tokens cost 36.6x less, or when what matters is LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare or DTBench, where it leads.

Model AClaude Sonnet 4.5Anthropic59.1/1002 independent benchmarks$1.16 per solved task Model BDeepSeek V3.2 ExpDeepSeek55.0/1002 independent benchmarksNo cost per solved task

425015

Shared results: 42
Claude Sonnet 4.5 only: 50
DeepSeek V3.2 Exp only: 15
Like-for-like categories: 7 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
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores 59.1 against 55.0.
2 benchmarks behind each score
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads, 20.7 against 16.6.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a AA Agentic Index result, 15.8.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a GPQA Diamond result, 81.6%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a AIME result, 88.2%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a MMLU Pro result, 87.4%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads, 1190 against 1179.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5 takes 1M tokens against 164K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Claude Sonnet 4.5 $0.011, DeepSeek V3.2 Exp $0.0005 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the number, $1.16.
Directional only

At a glance

Coding index: Claude Sonnet 4.5 59.1 from 2 benchmarks, DeepSeek V3.2 Exp 55.0 from 2 benchmarks.
Widest category: Coding, 11.9 points apart on average over 5 shared benchmarks.
Widest single gap: LMArena WebDev: HTML: Claude Sonnet 4.5 1399 against DeepSeek V3.2 Exp 1281, 19.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price: Claude Sonnet 4.5 $15.00 against DeepSeek V3.2 Exp $0.41 per million output tokens, 36.6x apart.
Context window: Claude Sonnet 4.5 takes 1M tokens, DeepSeek V3.2 Exp 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.

Boards won, where both have a result
Category	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Coding	5	0
Intelligence	2	0
Reasoning	3	0
Math	2	0
Knowledge	3	1
Web design	7	0
General	15	4
All shared boards	37	5

CodingLike-for-likeFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index50

Coding benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
Aider polyglot	Not measured	74.2%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
SWE-bench Verified	74.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
SWE-bench Multilingual	67.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena WebDev	1394	1272	Claude Sonnet 4.5
AA Coding Index	52.1	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)	73.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)	70.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)	22.6%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run)	Not measured	78.9%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run)	Not measured	31.1%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
Terminal-Bench	46.5%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
GSO-Bench	14.7%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
WeirdML	47.7%	39.5%	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Cybench	60.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena Text: coding	1488	1438	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: software and IT	1473	1438	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena WebDev: React	1386	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena WebDev: HTML	1399	1281	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here

IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20

Intelligence benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
AA Intelligence Index	20.7	16.6	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Epoch Capabilities Index	146.7	144.9	Claude Sonnet 4.5

Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared

Agentic work benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
AA Agentic Index	15.8	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Design Arena: agents building web apps	1060	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps	1050	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Design Arena: agents building mobile apps	1137	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
τ²-Bench Telecom	Not measured	33.9%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
METR time horizons	67.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Remote Labor Index	2.1%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
GDPval	42.5%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
DeepResearch Bench	52.6%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
TheAgentCompany	Not measured	42.9%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
OSWorld	62.9%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Vending-Bench 2	$3,839	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 27 boards here

ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30

Reasoning benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
GPQA Diamond	81.6%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)	79.3%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)	Not measured	79.7%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)	Not measured	14.9%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)	82.3%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
ARC-AGI	63.7%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
ARC-AGI-2	13.6%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
SimpleBench	54.3%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Chess puzzles	10.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Mystery game puzzles	17.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
EBR-bench	2.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
VPCT	39.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts	1462	1429	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: expert	1483	1422	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English	1471	1444	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here

MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20

Math benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
AIME	88.2%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MGSM (Vals AI)	94.3%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
AA Math Index	Not measured	87.7	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run)	Not measured	87.7%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
OTIS Mock AIME	77.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3	23.9%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
FrontierMath, tier 4	2.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
ProofBench	19.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MATH level 5	97.7%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena Text: math	1449	1422	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: mathematical work	1462	1433	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Neither model has a result on the other 2 boards here

KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index31

Knowledge benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
MMLU Pro	87.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LegalBench (Vals AI)	84.1%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
CaseLaw (Vals AI)	62.2%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
CorpFin (Vals AI)	62.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
TaxEval (Vals AI)	73.3%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MortgageTax (Vals AI)	64.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MedQA (Vals AI)	94.7%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MedCode (Vals AI)	44.1%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run)	Not measured	85.0%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
SimpleQA Verified	30.7%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena Text: science	1448	1443	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare	1444	1468	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
LMArena Text: legal and government	1451	1419	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: business and finance	1440	1412	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here

Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index70

Web design benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
Design Arena: websites	1190	1179	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Design Arena: UI components	1173	1166	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Design Arena: game dev	1166	1145	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Design Arena: data viz	1167	1152	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Design Arena: 3D	1158	1148	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Design Arena: all code categories	1183	1171	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Design Arena: SVG	1114	1031	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Design Arena: ASCII art	1204	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here

GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index154

General benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	Leader
SAGE (Vals AI)	36.1%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MedScribe (Vals AI)	84.5%	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
IFBench	Not measured	54.1%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)	Not measured	72.3%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
DTBench	83.2%	87.7%	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
LMCA	38.8%	29.1%	Claude Sonnet 4.5
Fiction.LiveBench	Not measured	83.3%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
CL-bench	Not measured	13.2%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
CL-bench Life	Not measured	9.5%	Only DeepSeek V3.2 Exp measured
LMArena Text	1438	1425	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: instruction following	1459	1401	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: creative writing	1442	1404	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: English	1450	1441	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: non-English	1425	1404	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: Chinese	1460	1461	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
LMArena Text: German	1427	1440	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
LMArena Text: Japanese	1390	1331	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: Korean	1402	1372	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: French	1459	1434	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: Spanish	1458	1441	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: Russian	1437	1412	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: Polish	1423	1435	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
LMArena Text: multi-turn	1465	1422	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: longer queries	1475	1418	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: writing and language	1442	1407	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: entertainment and media	1428	1407	Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Document	1450	Not measured	Only Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here

Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared

Image generation benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	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

Claude Sonnet 4.5$0.011Fits in one request

DeepSeek V3.2 Exp$0.0005Fits in one request

DeepSeek V3.2 Exp costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

Claude Sonnet 4.5$0.195Fits in one request

DeepSeek V3.2 Exp$0.015Fits in one request

DeepSeek V3.2 Exp costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

Claude Sonnet 4.5$0.750Fits in one request

DeepSeek V3.2 Exp$0.058Exceeds the context window

DeepSeek V3.2 Exp 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.

Specifications of Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Specification	Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
Maker	Anthropic	DeepSeek
Weights	No public weights listed	Open weights
Released	September 29, 2025	September 29, 2025
Context window	1M	164K
Input $/Mtok	$3.00	$0.27
Output $/Mtok	$15.00	$0.41
Coding index	59.1	55.0
Independent measurements behind it	2	2
Cost per solved task	$1.16	Not computable
Source	OpenRouter listing	OpenRouter listing

Questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than DeepSeek V3.2 Exp for coding?

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 for coding: it scores 59.1 on the Vibe Coding Index against 55.0 for DeepSeek V3.2 Exp. Pick DeepSeek V3.2 Exp when output tokens cost 36.6x less, or when what matters is LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare or DTBench, where it leads.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or DeepSeek V3.2 Exp?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens; DeepSeek V3.2 Exp costs $0.27 and $0.41. Cost per solved task is known for Claude Sonnet 4.5 only.

Which has the bigger context window, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or DeepSeek V3.2 Exp?

Claude Sonnet 4.5, with 1M tokens against 164K.

How many benchmarks is the Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs DeepSeek V3.2 Exp comparison based on?

42 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Sonnet 4.5's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and DeepSeek V3.2 Exp's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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Decision reading

Which one for your work

Coding

Intelligence

Agentic work

Reasoning

Math

Knowledge

Web design

Long documents

Everyday cost

Cost per solved task

At a glance

Benchmark by benchmark

What each workload costs

Chat turn

Repository review

Agent loop

Specification differences

Questions

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