Model comparison

Claude Opus 5.5 vs DeepSeek-V3

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 39.5 on the Noometry Index. DeepSeek-V3 costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 22 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic

68.6

Rank #3 Confirmed

DeepSeek-V3 DeepSeek

39.5

Rank #166 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in 8 categories and DeepSeek-V3 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 91.8 to 32.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for Claude Opus 5.5 and 37.8% for DeepSeek-V3.
  • DeepSeek-V3 is cheaper at $0.24 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
  • Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 164K.
  • DeepSeek-V3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 5.5 and DeepSeek-V3 specifications
Claude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
ProviderAnthropicDeepSeek
Noometry Index68.639.5
Released2026-09-222024-12-26
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M164K
Max output128K164K
Input $ / M tokens$4$0.24
Output $ / M tokens$20$0.90
Results tracked4460

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 71.9 (#3), DeepSeek-V3: 42.3 (#106)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
SciCode66.9%35.8%
LMArena Coding15471368
FrontierCode54.6%—
Aider Polyglot—55.1%
CursorBench57.8%—
LMArena WebDev1813—
FrontierSWE62.3%—
WeirdML—36.1%
BigCodeBench Instruct—50%
LiveBench Coding—70.9%
MirrorCode77.4%—
BigCodeBench Complete—62.2%
ALE-Bench2,147—
HumanEval+—86.6%
MBPP+—73%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#15), DeepSeek-V3: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
APEX-Agents73.5%—
GDP.pdf30.6%—
METR Time Horizons—49.6%
Vending-Bench 29,235—

Reasoning Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 80.2 (#3), DeepSeek-V3: 20.5 (#236)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
CritPt31.7%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts15351365
DTBench98.9%64.8%
LMCA68.2%15.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index167.33135.94
ARC-AGI-293.3%—
SimpleBench—27.2%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—52.3%
NYT Connections (extended)88.5%—
ARC-AGI-198.5%—
EBR-Bench71.4%—
LiveBench Reasoning—65.8%
Mystery Game Puzzles71%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—60.9%
BIG-Bench Hard—87.5%
ForecastBench—59.1
HellaSwag—88.9%
LiveBench—66.9%
PIQA—84.7%
WinoGrande—85.2%

Math Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 91.8 (#3), DeepSeek-V3: 32.1 (#219)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025100%37.8%
LMArena Math15061373
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)91.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 495%—
ProofBench100%—
Omni-MATH—40.3%
LiveBench Math—73.5%
MATH Level 5—75.5%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—1.7%
FrontierMath Erdős2.9%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 66.4 (#10), DeepSeek-V3: 37.5 (#155)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
GPQA Diamond90.6%67.6%
LMArena Expert15471351
SimpleQA Verified72.2%—
MMLU-Pro—72.3%
Confabulations—26.1%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—6.1%
GPQA (HELM)—53.8%
ARC (AI2) Challenge—95.3%
MMLU—87.2%
TriviaQA—82.9%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 57.8 (#1), DeepSeek-V3: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
LMArena Vision1321—
Blueprint-Bench 251.2%—
Furniture Assembly83.3%—

Multilingual Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 59.1 (#2), DeepSeek-V3: 48.5 (#143)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
LMArena Non-English15071358
LMArena Chinese15881391
LMArena French15141385
LMArena Russian15201373
LMArena Spanish15071358
LMArena German—1374
LMArena Japanese—1333
LMArena Korean—1319

Instruction Following Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 80.0 (#3), DeepSeek-V3: 72.8 (#130)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
LMArena Instruction Following15371345
LiveBench Instruction Following—81.5%
IFEval—83.2%

Long Context Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 47.1 (#19), DeepSeek-V3: 34.0 (#253)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
LMArena Longer Query15321352
Fiction.LiveBench—50%

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 78.2 (#3), DeepSeek-V3: 57.4 (#130)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5DeepSeek-V3
LMArena Text15151375
LMArena Creative Writing15331364
EQ-Bench Creative Writing20501472
LMArena Multi-Turn14991389
Short-Story Creative Writing—77%
WildBench—83%
LiveBench Language—49.1%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than DeepSeek-V3?

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 39.5 on the Noometry Index. DeepSeek-V3 costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or DeepSeek-V3?

DeepSeek-V3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.24 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.

Is Claude Opus 5.5 or DeepSeek-V3 better for coding?

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.9 versus 42.3 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 164K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and DeepSeek-V3 share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 44 scored results on Noometry and DeepSeek-V3 has 60.

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