Claude 3 Opus vs DeepSeek V3

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

Claude 3 Opus

Anthropic

First generation Opus. Highest reasoning capability in the Claude 3 family.

Input$15.00/M
Output$75.00/M
Context200K tokens
Best ForDeep analysis, complex coding tasks
Benchmark78/100

DeepSeek V3

DeepSeek

DeepSeek's latest general model. Competitive with Claude Sonnet at a fraction of the cost.

Input$0.140/M
Output$0.280/M
Context128K tokens
Best ForCost-effective coding and general tasks

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

ScenarioClaude 3 OpusDeepSeek V3Savings
Small Script (1K lines) $2.77 $0.01 DeepSeek V3 saves $2.76 (100%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $20.25 $0.11 DeepSeek V3 saves $20.14 (99%)
Large Project (50K lines) $101.25 $0.53 DeepSeek V3 saves $100.72 (99%)
Code Review (5K lines) $4.50 $0.03 DeepSeek V3 saves $4.47 (99%)

Verdict

DeepSeek V3 wins on both price and performance — $0.140/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Compare with Other Models