# DeepSeek V4 vs Claude Sonnet 5

On provider list prices, DeepSeek V4 costs $1.74 per million input tokens against $3 for Claude Sonnet 5: 1.7x apart. Output is $3.48 against $15 (4.3x).

## Specifications

| | DeepSeek V4 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | Deepseek | Anthropic |
| Access | API only | API only |
| Context window | 512K tokens | 1M tokens |
| List price, input | $1.74 / M tokens | $3 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $3.48 / M tokens | $15 / M tokens |
| Cached input | $0.20 / M tokens | n/a |
| License | Proprietary API | Proprietary API |
| Fine-tunable | No | No |

Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-21.

## What the numbers say

Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $3,306 a month on DeepSeek V4 and $8,850 on Claude Sonnet 5 at list: a gap of $5,544, or 2.7x.

Claude Sonnet 5 reads 1M tokens per request against 512K for DeepSeek V4, 2.0x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

## Choose DeepSeek V4 for

- Reasoning-heavy agents
- Long-document analysis
- Cost-sensitive production routes

## Choose Claude Sonnet 5 for

- Judgment calls with policy context
- Customer-facing writing
- Review and escalation flows

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V4 or Claude Sonnet 5?

DeepSeek V4, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $1.74/$3.48 per million tokens in and out against $3/$15 for Claude Sonnet 5. Billed on Allocate: $1.86/$3.72 against $3.21/$16.05.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5: 1,000,000 tokens (1M) against 512,000 (512K) for DeepSeek V4.

### Can I fine-tune DeepSeek V4 or Claude Sonnet 5?

No. Both are closed models served over API. If you want a model you can train and own, start from an open-weights base in the catalog.

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[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/deepseek-v4-vs-sonnet-5) · [DeepSeek V4](https://allocate.network/models/deepseek-v4.md) · [Claude Sonnet 5](https://allocate.network/models/sonnet-5.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)