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Cost and performance comparison

Claude Opus 4.8 vs DeepSeek R1

Model AAnthropic

Claude Opus 4.8

Capability score (editorial)96/100
Cost / 1M Tokens
$11.00
70% in · 30% out mix
≈ $15.73 for the same text, tokenizer included
Value Index (score÷cost)
6.1
Higher = better value
Speed
62/100
Context
1.0M
Tier
Power Tier

List price from the Anthropic pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.

Its tokenizer produces about 43% more tokens than OpenAI's for the same text, so the real cost runs higher than the list price suggests. This is an estimate: the tokenizer has not been measured yet.

Check the source

How we verify prices

Model BDeepSeek

DeepSeek R1

Capability score (editorial)93/100
Cost / 1M Tokens
$1.04
70% in · 30% out mix
Value Index (score÷cost)
87.5
Higher = better value
Speed
60/100
Context
128K
Tier
Power Tier

Last list price before the model was retired.

Across the 25 languages we measured, it needs about 21% more tokens than OpenAI's for the same text. Costs by language

How we verify prices

In-depth analysis

Claude Opus 4.8 vs DeepSeek R1: Detailed Comparison

Claude Opus 4.8 is Anthropic's flagship-tier language model with a 1.0M-token context window, excelling at coding. DeepSeek R1 from DeepSeek is a flagship-tier model supporting 128K tokens in context, with standout performance in reasoning.

Claude Opus 4.8 costs 14.8x what DeepSeek R1 does for the same text. That is a steep premium, and it buys a 12-point lead on combined coding and reasoning. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how much of your traffic actually needs the harder model — for most workloads the honest answer is a small fraction of it, which is an argument for routing rather than for picking one. Claude Opus 4.8 is priced at $5.00/M input tokens and $25.00/M output tokens. DeepSeek R1 costs $0.55/M input and $2.19/M output.

Claude Opus 4.8 turns the same text into about 40% more tokens than DeepSeek R1, because their tokenizers differ — so comparing list prices per token understates what Claude Opus 4.8 costs. For the same text, split 70% input and 30% output and counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts it, Claude Opus 4.8 works out at about $15.73 per million tokens and DeepSeek R1 at $1.06. Every cost figure on this page includes that difference.

On iOPTERA's editorial scores, Claude Opus 4.8 leads with 97/100 for coding and 96/100 for reasoning, against DeepSeek R1's 88/100 and 93/100.

Capability breakdown

Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how Claude Opus 4.8 and DeepSeek R1 stack up head to head:

coding
97
88
reasoning
96
93
data extraction
95
84
creative tasks
95
82
vision/multimodal
94
0

Best model by task

  • coding: Claude Opus 4.8 wins with 97/100
  • reasoning: Claude Opus 4.8 wins with 96/100
  • data extraction: Claude Opus 4.8 wins with 95/100
  • creative tasks: Claude Opus 4.8 wins with 95/100
  • vision/multimodal: Claude Opus 4.8 wins with 94/100

Estimated monthly cost at scale

For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), Claude Opus 4.8 runs about $143.00 while DeepSeek R1 runs about $10.08 — DeepSeek R1 saves roughly $132.92 (93%) every month.

What actually decides it

Claude Opus 4.8 and DeepSeek R1 come from different labs, which means different tokenizers, different API shapes, and a second vendor relationship. The same English text does not produce the same token count on both, so a price-per-million comparison understates the difference — measure your own prompts on each before treating the headline rates as the full story.

Claude Opus 4.8 and DeepSeek R1 are 16 months apart, which is more than one generation in this market. Benchmark comparisons across that gap flatter the older model: it was measured against the evaluations that existed at the time. Treat DeepSeek R1's scores as a floor for what it does well and be sceptical of a close-looking result.

The context gap is the largest single difference on this pair: Claude Opus 4.8 takes 1.0M tokens against 128K for DeepSeek R1, roughly 7.8x. That is the difference between feeding in a whole repository or a full contract set and having to chunk it. If your work involves documents you cannot split cleanly, this decides it on its own.

Throughput is close enough to ignore — 62/100 versus 60/100. Neither model will feel noticeably quicker in an interactive product, so latency is not a reason to choose between them.

One practical asymmetry: Claude Opus 4.8 offers a batch API at 50% off standard rates, and DeepSeek R1 does not. For anything that does not need an answer immediately — nightly enrichment, backfills, evaluation runs — that discount can be worth more than the difference in list price, and it is easy to overlook when comparing headline rates.

Claude Opus 4.8 is 14.8x the price of DeepSeek R1. Reserve it for the requests that actually need it and route the rest to DeepSeek R1 — that hybrid beats either model used alone on cost per useful answer.

What you actually pay

The list price is only the start. Prompt caching, batch processing and long prompts change the bill, and each provider sets them differently. Prices per 1M tokens.

Pricing terms beyond the list price, per 1M tokens
Pricing termClaude Opus 4.8DeepSeek R1
List price (input / output)$5.00 / $25.00$0.55 / $2.19
Cached input$0.5010% of the input price—
Batch API50% off input and output—
Long promptsNo surcharge across the 1M window—
Input with 80% cache hits$1.40—

The last row assumes 80% of input tokens are read from the cache, as in a chat app that re-sends a long system prompt or RAG over the same documents. Cache-write and storage charges are not included.

Claude also bills cache writes: 1.25× the input price for a 5-minute cache, 2× for one hour.

Checked on October 8, 2026 against the pricing pages of Anthropic, DeepSeek.

Capability scores

iOPTERA editorial scores across 5 categories — informed by public benchmarks, not measured by us

CategoryClaude OpusDeepSeek R1Winner

Coding

97
88
A

Reasoning

96
93
A

Extraction

95
84
A

Creative

95
82
A

Vision

94
0
A
Claude Opus 4.8: 5 wins
DeepSeek R1: 0 wins
Claude Opus 4.8 leads overall

Speed Score

62/100vs60/100
ClaudeDeepSeek

Context Window

1000Kvs128K
ClaudeDeepSeek

What Is a Token?

Models don't read words — they process tokens.

A token is roughly 4 characters of English text (~¾ of a word). Your API bill is priced per million tokens — understanding this directly reduces your costs.

Short phrase

"Hello, world!"

4 tokens
Claude Opus 4.8
$2.86
DeepSeek R1
$0.22

Business email

One typical email (~200 words)

~270 tokens
Claude Opus 4.8
$193.05
DeepSeek R1
$15.15

Code file

50-line Python script

~400 tokens
Claude Opus 4.8
$286.00
DeepSeek R1
$22.44

Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both Claude Opus 4.8 and DeepSeek R1, so the number only becomes meaningful at production volume. Input tokens only; add your output volume in the calculator below.

How to check your token usage

response.usage.total_tokens

Every API response includes a usage object. Sum total_tokens across all calls to get your monthly figure, then use the calculator below.

Your Cost Calculator

Enter your actual monthly token usage to see real savings

Quick Presets

30M tokens
Prompt 70%Completion 30%

Claude Opus 4.8

$471.90/mo

$5,662.80/yr

$5.00/M input$25.00/M output
Cheaper

DeepSeek R1

$31.89/mo

$382.62/yr

$0.55/M input$2.19/M output

Annual Savings

$5,280.18 saved per year

DeepSeek R1 cheaper · $440.01/mo

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