Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs DeepSeek V3— Pricing & Token Cost Comparison
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) and DeepSeek V3 (DeepSeek).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | DeepSeek V3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | DeepSeek |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $3.00 | $0.270 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $15.00 | $1.10 |
| Context caching | Yes — 90% off cached tokens | No |
| Batch API discount | Not available | Not available |
| Context window | 200K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Tokenizer | Anthropic tokenizer | SentencePiece (Llama) |
Real-world cost example
1,000 API requests per month, each with 500 input tokens and 200 output tokens (500K input + 200K output total).
Claude Sonnet 4.6
$4.5000
Input: $1.5000 + Output: $3.0000
DeepSeek V3
$0.3550
Input: $0.1350 + Output: $0.2200
DeepSeek V3 is 92% cheaper for this workload — saving $4.1450 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 cheaper than DeepSeek V3?
- No, DeepSeek V3 is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $0.270/1M input and $1.10/1M output tokens, it costs $0.3550 versus $4.5000 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 — a 92% difference.
- What is the context window of Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs DeepSeek V3?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports a 200K token context window. DeepSeek V3 supports a 128K token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
- Do Claude Sonnet 4.6 or DeepSeek V3 support context caching or batch discounts?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It does not offer a batch API discount. DeepSeek V3 does not support context caching. It does not offer a batch API discount.
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