Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision vs DeepSeek-V3.2: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision and DeepSeek-V3.2 on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. DeepSeek-V3.2 has the stronger average benchmark score; DeepSeek-V3.2 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $16.99 per million input tokens and $82.33 per million output tokens, and averages 83.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $16.99 / 1M
- Output
- $82.33 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 83.8
- Open weights
- No
DeepSeek-V3.2
DeepSeek-V3.2 is a frontier model from DeepSeek. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $5.88 per million input tokens and $24.70 per million output tokens, and averages 84.0 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.88 / 1M
- Output
- $24.70 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 84.0
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision | DeepSeek-V3.2 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $16.99 | $5.88 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $82.33 | $24.70 | B |
| Context window | 128,000 | 1,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 16,384 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 83.8 | 84.0 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1447.6 | 1455.6 | B |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision wins 3, DeepSeek-V3.2 wins 9, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision | DeepSeek-V3.2 | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.8 | 86.9 | 2.1 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| GPQA Diamond | 79.6 | 79.7 | 0.1 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.7 | 74.4 | 0.7 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| HumanEval | 87.0 | 89.7 | 2.7 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| MATH-500 | 90.6 | 89.7 | 0.9 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision |
| AIME 2025 | 86.4 | 79.6 | 6.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision |
| LiveCodeBench | 76.5 | 80.4 | 3.9 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| IFEval | 89.9 | 89.4 | 0.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision |
| TruthfulQA | 83.7 | 84.5 | 0.8 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| HellaSwag | 89.4 | 90.2 | 0.8 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| MMMU | 79.7 | 79.9 | 0.2 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
| Arena Elo | 1447.6 | 1455.6 | 8.0 | DeepSeek-V3.2 |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision costs about $33.33 per million tokens and DeepSeek-V3.2 costs about $10.59. DeepSeek-V3.2 is roughly 68% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
DeepSeek-V3.2 has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision wins 3, DeepSeek-V3.2 wins 9, and 0 are tied. On the index average, DeepSeek-V3.2 leads Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision by 0.2 points (84.0 versus 83.8).
The price picture favours DeepSeek-V3.2. The context picture favours DeepSeek-V3.2. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with DeepSeek-V3.2 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision if
- You need the larger 16,384-token output limit.
Choose DeepSeek-V3.2 if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision better than DeepSeek-V3.2?
On the index average, DeepSeek-V3.2 leads Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision by 0.2 points (84.0 versus 83.8). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision wins 3 benchmarks, DeepSeek-V3.2 wins 9.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision or DeepSeek-V3.2?
DeepSeek-V3.2 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $10.59 per million tokens, versus $33.33 for Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision.
Which has the larger context window?
DeepSeek-V3.2 has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision is proprietary; DeepSeek-V3.2 is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with DeepSeek-V3.2 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.