Claude Opus 4.8 vs DeepSeek R1 (0528)
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Anthropic · May 2026
Anthropic's flagship Opus with adaptive thinking, effort controls and a 1M context — 88.6% on SWE-bench Verified at $5/$25.
DeepSeek · May 2025
The open reasoning model that started it all — RL-trained chain-of-thought, MIT licensed, and a research landmark.
The verdict
Claude Opus 4.8 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for DeepSeek R1 (0528). On price the gap is dramatic: DeepSeek R1 (0528) works out roughly 10x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Opus 4.8 also takes 1M 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.
Benchmark head-to-head 1–0
Specs & pricing
| Claude Opus 4.8 | DeepSeek R1 (0528) | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | 67.8 |
| Input price / 1M | $5 | $0.55 |
| Output price / 1M | $25 | $2.19 |
| Context window | 1M | 128K |
| Max output | 64K | 64K |
| Open weights | no | yes (MIT) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Mar 2026 | Mar 2025 |
| Released | May 2026 | May 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $87.50 | $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 4.8 or DeepSeek R1 (0528)?
- Claude Opus 4.8 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for DeepSeek R1 (0528). On price the gap is dramatic: DeepSeek R1 (0528) works out roughly 10x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Opus 4.8 also takes 1M 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 4.8 or DeepSeek R1 (0528)?
- Claude Opus 4.8 costs $5/$25 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 $87.50 versus $8.79.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.8 or DeepSeek R1 (0528)?
- We don't yet track SWE-bench Verified results for both models; check their individual pages for coding-related scores.