Model comparison

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs DeepSeek V3.1

Anthropic against DeepSeek, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Haiku 4.5

Budget

DeepSeek

DeepSeek V3.1

Budget · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
Specification	Claude Haiku 4.5	DeepSeek V3.1
Provider	Anthropic	DeepSeek
Tier	Budget	Budget
Context window	Winner: 200K	128K
Max output	64K	Winner: 128K
Input / 1M tokens	$1	Winner: $0.25
Output / 1M tokens	$5	Winner: $0.95
Weights	Closed	Open
Parameters	Not disclosedUnverified	671B total / 37B active (MoE)
Reasoning levels	Not verifiedUnverified	low, high, max
Modalities	text, image	text
License	Not disclosedUnverified	MIT
API model id	claude-haiku-4-5-20251001	Not publishedUnverified
Released	October 15, 2025	August 21, 2025
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14)	28	Winner: 44
SWE-bench Verified (2026-02-17)	66.6	Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench (2025-10-15)	40.21	Not verifiedUnverified

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
2026-02-17: SWE-bench official leaderboard (independent harness: mini-SWE-agent bash-only, $0.33/task; conflicts with vendor 73.3 — both preserved)Real GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.
2025-10-15: Anthropic — Introducing Claude Haiku 4.5 (vendor, Terminus 2, no thinking, 6 runs; 41.75 with 32K thinking)Real GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.

Pricing tiers: Claude Haiku 4.5: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus/Sonnet 5). · DeepSeek V3.1: Third-party hosted ~$0.25/$0.95 per MTok; first-party peak/off-peak rates vary — verify on api-docs.deepseek.com.

BudgetRecord checked September 5, 2026

Claude Haiku 4.5

Claude Haiku 4.5 is Anthropic's fastest, cheapest tier for high-volume classification and extraction.

Best for

High-volume classification
Routine extraction
Latency-sensitive stacks

Watch out

No adaptive thinking; 200K context only. A generation behind Opus/Sonnet 5 — Anthropic lists 2026-10-15 as the earliest possible retirement date.

BudgetOpen weightsRecord checked September 3, 2026

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1 is the open-weight (MIT) general model — 671B/37B MoE, 128K context, strong reasoning at low cost.

Best for

Cost-sensitive hosted agents
High-volume coding assist
Open-weight deployments

Watch out

Self-hosting needs datacentre VRAM; hosted rates differ by provider.

When the cheaper one wins

DeepSeek V3.1 is cheaper on output at $0.95 per million tokens against $5 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — about 5.3×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: parameter count, reasoning levels.
1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 6 days ago.
Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Claude Haiku 4.5: Anthropic — Claude Haiku 4.5 (accessed 2026-08-29)
Claude Haiku 4.5: Anthropic pricing (accessed 2026-08-29)
DeepSeek V3.1: DeepSeek — V3.1 (accessed 2026-08-29)
DeepSeek V3.1: CloudPrice — DeepSeek V3.1 (accessed 2026-08-29)

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Haiku 4.5 · DeepSeek V3.1

Common questions

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs DeepSeek V3.1

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Haiku 4.5 or DeepSeek V3.1 cheaper for input?

DeepSeek V3.1 is cheaper at $0.25 per million input tokens, against $1 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — roughly 4.0× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Haiku 4.5 has tiered pricing: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus/Sonnet 5). DeepSeek V3.1 has tiered pricing: Third-party hosted ~$0.25/$0.95 per MTok; first-party peak/off-peak rates vary — verify on api-docs.deepseek.com.

Is Claude Haiku 4.5 or DeepSeek V3.1 cheaper for output?

DeepSeek V3.1 is cheaper at $0.95 per million output tokens, against $5 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — roughly 5.3× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Haiku 4.5 has tiered pricing: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus/Sonnet 5). DeepSeek V3.1 has tiered pricing: Third-party hosted ~$0.25/$0.95 per MTok; first-party peak/off-peak rates vary — verify on api-docs.deepseek.com.

Which has the larger context window, Claude Haiku 4.5 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Claude Haiku 4.5 accepts 200K tokens against 128K for DeepSeek V3.1. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.

Should I use Claude Haiku 4.5 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Both sit in the budget tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Haiku 4.5 suits high-volume classification; DeepSeek V3.1 suits cost-sensitive hosted agents.

Can I self-host Claude Haiku 4.5 or DeepSeek V3.1?

DeepSeek V3.1 publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Claude Haiku 4.5 is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

Input price: DeepSeek V3.1 costs $0.25 per 1M tokens versus $1 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — a 4x difference at the headline tier.
Context: Claude Haiku 4.5 takes 200K against 128K for DeepSeek V3.1 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
Deployment: DeepSeek V3.1 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.

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