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Claude Haiku 4 vs DeepSeek-V3

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Claude Haiku 4 specs · DeepSeek-V3 specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceDeepSeek-V3

    DeepSeek-V3 publishes pricing ($1.10 / 1M output tokens) while Claude Haiku 4 does not.

  • Context windowClaude Haiku 4

    Claude Haiku 4 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesClaude Haiku 4

    Claude Haiku 4 supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for DeepSeek-V3.

  • OpennessDeepSeek-V3

    DeepSeek-V3 ships open weights (MIT); Claude Haiku 4 is API-only.

It's a genuine coin-flip between Claude Haiku 4 and DeepSeek-V3: 2 category wins each, with the rest tied. DeepSeek-V3 publishes pricing ($1.10 / 1M output tokens) while Claude Haiku 4 does not. Claude Haiku 4 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. They differ in modality coverage, Claude Haiku 4 handles text, vision while DeepSeek-V3 handles text, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. DeepSeek-V3 ships open weights (MIT); Claude Haiku 4 is API-only.

Claude Haiku 4 is the newer of the two, released 9 months after DeepSeek-V3, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Claude Haiku 4 is usually picked for summarization and customer support workloads, while DeepSeek-V3 sees more deployments in open source llm and commercial use llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecClaude Haiku 4DeepSeek-V3
ProviderAnthropicDeepSeek
ReleasedOct 2025Dec 2024
Modalitiestext, visiontext
Context window200K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$0.27 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$1.10 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,2024-07
Open weightsNoYes (MIT)
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs $2.46
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $24.60
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $47.10

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Claude Haiku 4Pricing unavailable
  • DeepSeek-V3$0.082

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Claude Haiku 4DeepSeek-V3
  • MMLU,88.5
  • HumanEval,90.0
Pick Claude Haiku 4 if

Claude Haiku 4 fits when…

  • Fast and cheap for an Anthropic model
  • Inherits Claude's sensible defaults
  • Vision support included
  • Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for DeepSeek-V3.
  • Multimodal needs covering vision.
Pick DeepSeek-V3 if

DeepSeek-V3 fits when…

  • Frontier-level quality at open-weight prices
  • MIT license, clean commercial use
  • Cheap to serve via MoE architecture
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (MIT).
Don't want either?

Consider Claude Opus 4.7

Anthropic's mid-2026 flagship, ahead on SWE-bench, agent reliability, and writing quality.

See Claude Opus 4.7 specsClaude Haiku 4 vs Claude Opus 4.7DeepSeek-V3 vs Claude Opus 4.7

Frequently asked

  • Is Claude Haiku 4 or DeepSeek-V3 cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Claude Haiku 4 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for DeepSeek-V3.
  • Is Claude Haiku 4 or DeepSeek-V3 better for coding?
    Both Claude Haiku 4 and DeepSeek-V3 are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    DeepSeek-V3 ships open weights (MIT). Claude Haiku 4 is API-only.
  • When were Claude Haiku 4 and DeepSeek-V3 released?
    Claude Haiku 4 was released by Anthropic on 2025-10-01. DeepSeek-V3 was released by DeepSeek on 2024-12-26.
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