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Claude Haiku 5.5 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: pricing and benchmarks

Claude Haiku 5.5 is 67% cheaper on input tokens ($0.10 vs $0.30 per 1M). Claude Haiku 5.5 is 58% cheaper on output tokens ($0.50 vs $1.20 per 1M). On our document Q&A workload (50,000 questions a month), Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $55.00 a month versus $156.00 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, 65% less. Roughly tied. Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 159.0 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 155.6 on the Epoch Capabilities Index, and their confidence intervals overlap.

Prices verified October 17, 2026.

Which should you choose?

Overall capability
Too close to call

Roughly tied. Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 159.0 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 155.6 on the Epoch Capabilities Index, and their confidence intervals overlap.

Advanced math
Claude Haiku 5.5

Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 75.1% on FrontierMath (Tiers 1–3) vs 67.4% for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.

Price
Claude Haiku 5.5

Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.20 per 1M tokens (3:1 input-to-output mix) vs $0.525 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, 62% less.

Best value
Claude Haiku 5.5

Claude Haiku 5.5 delivers equal or higher overall capability for 62% less.

Pricing and specs

Claude Haiku 5.5DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
ProviderAnthropicDeepSeek
API model IDclaude-haiku-5-5deepseek-flash
Input / 1M tokens$0.10$0.30
Cached input / 1M tokens$0.01$0.006
Output / 1M tokens$0.50$1.20
Long-context rates$0.50 in / $2.50 out above 100K prompt tokens—
Context window1M tokens1M tokens
Max output128K tokens384K tokens
Batch discount50% off—

Benchmarks

Claude Haiku 5.5DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Epoch Capabilities Index159.0155.6
GPQA Diamond· Science reasoning89.6%89.8%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1–3)· Advanced math75.1%67.4%
SimpleQA Verified· Factual accuracy23.8%42.9%
ARC-AGI-2· Abstract reasoning—72.9%
DeepSWE· Coding——
APEX-Agents· Agentic work56.1%39.5%

Source: Epoch AI, best recorded result per model (CC BY 4.0). A dash means no published score. See all benchmarks

Monthly cost for real workloads

WorkloadClaude Haiku 5.5DeepSeek V4.1 FlashDifference
Support chatbot
100,000 replies a month, ~1,500 input tokens (system prompt + history) and ~400 output tokens each.
$35.00$93.00Claude Haiku 5.5 62% cheaper
Document Q&A (RAG)
50,000 questions a month with ~8,000 tokens of retrieved context and ~600 output tokens each.
$55.00$156.00Claude Haiku 5.5 65% cheaper
Coding agent
10,000 agent steps a month, ~40,000 input tokens each (70% read from the prompt cache) and ~2,000 output tokens.
$24.80$61.68Claude Haiku 5.5 60% cheaper

Estimates use standard list prices and ignore cache-write surcharges. Different tokenizers can count the same text differently, so test with your own prompts.

Claude Haiku 5.5 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash cost calculator

Standard-tier list prices. Long-context rates apply automatically where the provider publishes a threshold. Excludes cache-write surcharges, taxes, batch and volume discounts.

Claude Haiku 5.5 pricing notes

Anthropic’s fastest, lowest-cost model, priced by prompt length, with a 1M-token context window.

  • Prompts over 100K tokens, counting cache reads and writes, are billed at $0.50 input / $2.50 output per 1M tokens.
  • Cache writes cost $0.125 (5-minute cache) or $0.20 (1-hour cache) per 1M tokens, 5x that above 100K tokens.
  • US-only inference (inference_geo: "us") costs 1.1x.
Anthropic official pricing ↗

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash pricing notes

DeepSeek’s low-cost model with thinking and non-thinking modes, tool calls and vision input.

  • Prices shown are peak rates. Off-peak rates are half: peak hours are 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday.
  • Compatible with both OpenAI-format and Anthropic-format APIs.
  • Web Search and Fetch cost $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests each; calls made through Claude Code, Codex or DeepSeek Harness are free until November 1, 2026.
DeepSeek official pricing ↗

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Haiku 5.5 cheaper than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
Claude Haiku 5.5 is 67% cheaper on input tokens ($0.10 vs $0.30 per 1M). Claude Haiku 5.5 is 58% cheaper on output tokens ($0.50 vs $1.20 per 1M). On our document Q&A workload (50,000 questions a month), Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $55.00 a month versus $156.00 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, 65% less.
Which is more capable, Claude Haiku 5.5 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
Roughly tied. Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 159.0 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 155.6 on the Epoch Capabilities Index, and their confidence intervals overlap.
How much does Claude Haiku 5.5 cost per 1M tokens?
Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.10 per 1M input tokens and $0.50 per 1M output tokens, and $0.01 per 1M cached input tokens on Anthropic’s standard tier.
How much does DeepSeek V4.1 Flash cost per 1M tokens?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.30 per 1M input tokens and $1.20 per 1M output tokens, and $0.006 per 1M cached input tokens on DeepSeek’s standard tier.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Haiku 5.5 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
Both offer a 1M-token context window.

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