Claude Opus 4.1 vs DeepSeek R1 (0528)
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Anthropic · Aug 2025
The last $15/$75-priced Opus — a 2025 flagship now thoroughly superseded by cheaper, stronger successors.
DeepSeek · May 2025
The open reasoning model that started it all — RL-trained chain-of-thought, MIT licensed, and a research landmark.
The verdict
These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. On price the gap is dramatic: DeepSeek R1 (0528) works out roughly 31x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Opus 4.1 also takes 200K of context versus 128K for DeepSeek R1 (0528). And DeepSeek R1 (0528) is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Specs & pricing
| Claude Opus 4.1 | DeepSeek R1 (0528) | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | 67.8 |
| Input price / 1M | $15 | $0.55 |
| Output price / 1M | $75 | $2.19 |
| Context window | 200K | 128K |
| Max output | 32K | 64K |
| Open weights | no | yes (MIT) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Mar 2025 | Mar 2025 |
| Released | Aug 2025 | May 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $262.50 | $8.79 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Claude Opus 4.1 or DeepSeek R1 (0528)?
- These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. On price the gap is dramatic: DeepSeek R1 (0528) works out roughly 31x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Opus 4.1 also takes 200K of context versus 128K for DeepSeek R1 (0528). And DeepSeek R1 (0528) is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.1 or DeepSeek R1 (0528)?
- Claude Opus 4.1 costs $15/$75 per million input/output tokens, while DeepSeek R1 (0528) costs $0.55/$2.19. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $262.50 versus $8.79.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.1 or DeepSeek R1 (0528)?
- We don't yet track SWE-bench Verified results for both models; check their individual pages for coding-related scores.