ModelRefs / Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs DeepSeek V3
Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs DeepSeek V3
Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs DeepSeek V3: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Claude 3.7 Sonnet is Anthropic's February 2025 hybrid reasoning model, combining immediate answers with an optional extended thinking mode in a single model rather than two. Thinking can be budgeted by token count up to a 128,000-token output limit, across a 200,000-token context window. The claude-3-7-sonnet-20250219 snapshot was deprecated on 28 October 2025 and retired on Anthropic-operated platforms on 19 February 2026.
DeepSeek V3: DeepSeek V3 is DeepSeek's December 2024 open-weights Mixture-of-Experts model, activating 37 billion of 671 billion total parameters per token across a 128,000-token context window. It ships under the MIT licence with published weights and a technical report, and DeepSeek reports its own evaluation table for the text chat model under an 8,000-token output limit.
Context window: Claude 3.7 Sonnet accepts up to 200,000 tokens, DeepSeek V3 up to 128,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs DeepSeek V3 at a glance
| Attribute | Claude 3.7 Sonnet | DeepSeek V3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | DeepSeek |
| Released | 2025-02-24 | 2024-12-26 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input price | $3/M tokens | $0.27/M tokens |
| Output price | $15/M tokens | $1.1/M tokens |
| Licence | Proprietary | MIT |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | Yes, open weights |
| Modalities | text, vision | text |
Where they differ most
- Cost Efficiency: Claude 3.7 Sonnet 37%, DeepSeek V3 85%. DeepSeek V3 leads on this dimension.
- Coding: Claude 3.7 Sonnet 64%, DeepSeek V3 67%. DeepSeek V3 leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs DeepSeek V3.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude 3.7 Sonnet or DeepSeek V3?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet and DeepSeek V3 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude 3.7 Sonnet cheaper than DeepSeek V3?
Compare $0.00300 vs $0.00027 on this page.