ModelRefs / Claude Opus 4 vs DeepSeek V3
Claude Opus 4 vs DeepSeek V3
Claude Opus 4 vs DeepSeek V3: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
Claude Opus 4: Claude Opus 4 is Anthropic's May 2025 hybrid-reasoning model for complex coding, reasoning, multimodal analysis, and long-running agent workflows. The dated claude-opus-4-20250514 snapshot was retired on Anthropic-operated platforms on June 15, 2026 and is retained as a historical evaluation and migration reference.
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 Opus 4 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 Opus 4 vs DeepSeek V3 at a glance
| Attribute | Claude Opus 4 | DeepSeek V3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | DeepSeek |
| Released | 2025-05-22 | 2024-12-26 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input price | $15/M tokens | $0.27/M tokens |
| Output price | $75/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
- Reasoning: Claude Opus 4 79%, DeepSeek V3 72%. Claude Opus 4 leads on this dimension.
- Coding: Claude Opus 4 60%, 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 Opus 4 vs DeepSeek V3.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude Opus 4 or DeepSeek V3?
Claude Opus 4 and DeepSeek V3 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude Opus 4 cheaper than DeepSeek V3?
Compare $0.0150 vs $0.00027 on this page.