Model comparison
DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Claude Sonnet 5.5: pricing, context and features compared
DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $0.2088 per million input tokens and $0.4176 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 and $10. Here is how they compare on specs, on what real workloads cost, and on which to pick for what, from prices updated daily.
DeepSeek’s largest open-weight model is often weighed against Claude Sonnet: one can be self-hosted or bought from many hosts, the other only from Anthropic and its cloud partners.
- Input / 1M
- $0.2088
- Output / 1M
- $0.4176
- Context
- 1,024,000
- Max output
- 384,000
This page covers the original DeepSeek V4 Pro weights (0423), and its price is the top-ranked host’s on OpenRouter, not DeepSeek’s. DeepSeek’s own API now serves the newer V4-Pro-0813 under the deepseek-v4-pro name, at $1.32 input and $3.96 output per million tokens during peak hours (01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays) and half that, $0.66 and $1.98, at all other times.
Full DeepSeek V4 Pro pricing and specs- Input / 1M
- $2
- Output / 1M
- $10
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Max output
- 128,000
Verdict
DeepSeek V4 Pro or Claude Sonnet 5.5: which to pick
DeepSeek V4 Pro has the lower list prices: 9.6× cheaper per input token and 24× per output token. On our data, DeepSeek V4 Pro has the edge for the lowest bill, very long prompts, long replies, repeated prompts, batch jobs and self-hosting, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 for non-text inputs. For scale, a support chatbot handling 1,000 requests a day costs about $10.24 a month on DeepSeek V4 Pro and $169.57 on Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- Lowest bill for typical workloadsPick DeepSeek V4 Pro
- DeepSeek V4 Pro costs less on all 4 workloads below, 5.7× to 17× cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.5 at list prices.
- Very long prompts (whole codebases, long documents)Pick DeepSeek V4 Pro
- Both read about 1,000,000 tokens per request. One 800,000-token prompt with a 2,000-token reply costs $0.17 on DeepSeek V4 Pro and $1.62 on Claude Sonnet 5.5. Neither has a long-prompt surcharge in our data.
- Long replies (reports, large code files)Pick DeepSeek V4 Pro
- DeepSeek V4 Pro can write up to 384,000 tokens in one reply, against 128,000 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- Images, audio, video or files in the promptPick Claude Sonnet 5.5
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 also accepts images and files, which DeepSeek V4 Pro doesn’t.
- Repeated long prompts (prompt caching)Pick DeepSeek V4 Pro
- DeepSeek V4 Pro bills cached input at $0.0174 per 1M (8% of its input price), against $0.10 per 1M (5% of its input price) for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- Overnight batch jobsPick DeepSeek V4 Pro
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a batch price ($1 in, $5 out per 1M); DeepSeek V4 Pro has none in our data. Even so, on the document summariser workload DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $17.53 a month against $100.38.
- Self-hosting or choosing your own hostPick DeepSeek V4 Pro
- DeepSeek V4 Pro has open weights, so you can run it yourself or pick a host; Claude Sonnet 5.5 is API-only.
Criteria use only list prices, published limits and the features each provider declares. We don’t rank answer quality; test both models on your own prompts before you commit.
Specs
DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 side by side
| Spec | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Anthropic |
| Input / 1M tokens | $0.2088 (better) | $2 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $0.4176 (better) | $10 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.0174 (better) | $0.10 |
| Cache write / 1M | No write charge listed | $2.50 |
| Batch in / out | No batch price | $1 / $5 (better) |
| Long-prompt price | None | None |
| Context window | 1,024,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Max output | 384,000 (better) | 128,000 |
| Accepts | text | text, images, files |
| Image input | No | Yes (better) |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning mode | Yes | Yes |
| Prompt caching | Yes | Yes |
| Structured output | Yes | Yes |
| Open weights | Yes | No |
| Knowledge cutoff | Not published | Not published |
| First listed | 2026-04-24 | 2026-09-28 |
Prices in US dollars per million tokens. Highlighted: the lower price or larger limit where the difference is over 5%. Features are as declared by each provider’s API; “First listed” is when our data source first listed the model. Long-prompt prices apply to the whole request once the prompt passes the threshold.
Costs
What DeepSeek V4 Pro and Claude Sonnet 5.5 cost for real workloads
| Workload | Tokens in / out | Requests/day | DeepSeek V4 Pro / month | Claude Sonnet 5.5 / month | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support chatbotCalculator: DeepSeek V4 Pro · Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 1,500 / 400 | 1,000 | $10.2450% cached | $169.5750% cached | DeepSeek V4 Pro (17×) |
| RAG appCalculator: DeepSeek V4 Pro · Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 6,000 / 500 | 500 | $18.7420% cached | $223.8720% cached | DeepSeek V4 Pro (12×) |
| Coding agentCalculator: DeepSeek V4 Pro · Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 40,000 / 2,000 | 200 | $18.6380% cached | $238.4780% cached | DeepSeek V4 Pro (13×) |
| Document summariserCalculator: DeepSeek V4 Pro · Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 8,000 / 600 | 300 | $17.53no batch price | $100.38batch | DeepSeek V4 Pro (5.7×) |
Each row uses the same token counts for both models and list prices (for an open-weight model, the top-ranked host’s price on OpenRouter), with caching and batch discounts only where the provider publishes them. A month is 365 ÷ 12 days. The support chatbot reads 50% of its prompt from the cache. The RAG app reads 20% of its prompt from the cache. The coding agent reads 80% of its prompt from the cache. The document summariser runs as a batch job where a batch price exists. Open either model in the LLM cost calculator to change any number.
Tokenizers
Are their per-token prices comparable?
Not exactly. Each model splits text into tokens its own way, so the same prompt can be a different number of tokens on DeepSeek V4 Pro and Claude Sonnet 5.5, and the cheaper per-token price isn’t always the cheaper bill. The last column converts each output price into a price per million English words, which is the fairer comparison for prose.
| Model | Tokenizer | Tokens per 1,000 words | Output per 1M words |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | DeepSeek V4Our measurement | 1,145 | $0.48 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Claude (Opus 4.7 and later)Provider’s published figure | 1,802 | $18.02 |
English prose, measured on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2026-10-11) or taken from the provider’s published words-per-token figure. Code, JSON and other languages use more tokens per word. Count your own text in the token counter or convert with tokens to words.
FAQ
DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 questions
Is DeepSeek V4 Pro cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.5?
DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $0.2088 per million input tokens and $0.4176 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 and $10. For a support chatbot handling 1,000 requests a day, that is about $10.24 a month on DeepSeek V4 Pro against $169.57 on Claude Sonnet 5.5, so DeepSeek V4 Pro is 17× cheaper there. Try your own numbers in the LLM cost calculator.
Which has the bigger context window, DeepSeek V4 Pro or Claude Sonnet 5.5?
Their context windows are about the same size. DeepSeek V4 Pro reads up to 1,024,000 tokens (roughly 768,000 English words) and writes up to 384,000 tokens per reply. Claude Sonnet 5.5 reads up to 1,000,000 tokens (roughly 750,000 English words) and writes up to 128,000 tokens per reply. The window is shared between your prompt and the reply. Word counts use a rough 0.75 words per token; real ratios depend on the tokenizer.
Is DeepSeek V4 Pro or Claude Sonnet 5.5 better for coding?
We don’t publish benchmark scores, so this page can’t say which writes better code. What we can show is cost: a coding agent re-sending 40,000 tokens of context (80% cached) and writing 2,000 tokens, 200 times a day, costs about $18.63 a month on DeepSeek V4 Pro and $238.47 on Claude Sonnet 5.5. Both support tool calling. Test both on tasks from your own repository.
Can DeepSeek V4 Pro and Claude Sonnet 5.5 read images?
DeepSeek V4 Pro accepts text only. Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts images and files as well as text. Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 can read screenshots, photos or scanned pages, so for image work the choice is made for you. This is what each provider declares for its API, not a measure of how well it works.
Are DeepSeek V4 Pro and Claude Sonnet 5.5 open source?
DeepSeek V4 Pro has open weights, so you can run it yourself or choose between hosting providers; its price here is a typical hosted price. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is closed: it’s only available through Anthropic’s API and its cloud partners. Check the licence before commercial use.
Do DeepSeek V4 Pro and Claude Sonnet 5.5 count tokens the same way?
Not necessarily. Each model splits text into tokens with its own tokenizer, so the same prompt can be a different number of tokens on each, and per-token prices aren’t directly comparable. DeepSeek V4 Pro uses about 1,145 tokens per 1,000 English words (our measurement). Claude Sonnet 5.5 uses about 1,802 tokens per 1,000 English words (the provider’s published figure). Count your own text with the token counter or convert with tokens to words.