Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) vs DeepSeek V3
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) vs DeepSeek V3: DeepSeek V3 is cheaper by 82% on average. Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) from Anthropic (1,000,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls) vs. DeepSeek V3 from Azure AI Foundry (128,000-token context). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.
Side-by-side cost
Live workload comparison
Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.
3,000
01,000,000
400
0128,000
5,000
01,000,000
At this workload, DeepSeek V3 is 79% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) — a savings of $3,007/month ($36,079/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
model: deepseek-v3
provider: azure-ai-foundry
fallback:
model: claude-opus-4-6-20260205
provider: anthropic
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 } # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live| Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) | DeepSeek V3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $5.00/M | $1.14/M |
| Output price | $25.00/M | $4.56/M |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 128,000 |
| Max output | 128,000 | 8,192 |
| Function calling | ✓ | — |
| Vision | ✓ | — |
| Audio input | — | — |
| Reasoning | ✓ | — |
| Prompt caching | ✓ | — |
| Structured output | ✓ | — |
| Pricing verified | May 12, 2026 | May 12, 2026 |
Benchmark comparison
Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.
Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
1,498
DeepSeek V3
1,310