THE TICKER · HEAD-TO-HEAD · CHECKED DAILY · LAST CHANGE 2026-07-25
CLAUDE OPUS 5 VS DEEPSEEK V4 FLASH
Anthropic vs DeepSeek, in USD per million tokens, verified daily against public list prices. Same jobs, both meters running.
Claude Opus 5 costs 81.6x more than DeepSeek V4 Flash for the same job — a 1,000-token prompt with a 3,000-token reply runs $0.08 vs $0.0010. At 1,000 runs a day, that gap is $2,370.60 a month for identical traffic.
SIDE BY SIDE
| Claude Opus 5 → | DeepSeek V4 Flash → | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Anthropic | DeepSeek |
| Input / MTok | $5.00 | $0.140 |
| Output / MTok | $25.00 | $0.280 |
| Output multiple | 5.0x | 2.0x |
| 1K prompt + 3K reply | $0.08 | $0.0010 |
SAME JOB, BOTH BILLS
| Scenario | Claude Opus 5 | DeepSeek V4 Flash | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| A typical prompt | $0.02 | $0.0003 | 81.6x |
| A 20-turn conversation | $0.12 | $0.0017 | 71.4x |
| Summarizing a 10-page document | $0.12 | $0.0020 | 59.5x |
| One agent run | $0.31 | $0.0036 | 85.2x |
| A code review request | $0.10 | $0.0013 | 80.4x |
Output sizes use the same editorial ratios as the Burn Calculator. Estimates, not invoices — and price is not a benchmark: the cheaper model is only a bargain if it does the job.
SETTLE IT WITH YOUR OWN PROMPT
Paste a real prompt into the Burn Calculator and see what it costs on Claude Opus 5, DeepSeek V4 Flash and the other 14 models on the board — plus how much of it is waste either way.