Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs DeepSeek V3.2

Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic · Balanced · Proprietary
$4.40/1M · 1M ctx
DeepSeek V3.2
DeepSeek · Balanced · Open weights
$0.42/1M · 164K ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for money
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
Sonnet 5.5
DeepSeek V3.2
Maker
Anthropic
DeepSeek
Blended price / 1M
$4.40
$0.42
Input / output
$2.00 in · $10 out / 1M tokens
$0.26 in · $0.80 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
164K
Open weights
No
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
9.8
7.6
Agentic Ability
9.8
7.4
Speed
8.4
7.8
Value for money
8.8
9.4
Reliability
9.4
8.6

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Sonnet 5.5 or DeepSeek V3.2?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 if you want the everyday default for coding agents, escalating to Opus 5.5 only for the hardest tasks. Choose DeepSeek V3.2 if you want dependable open-weight output on a tight budget.

In our editorial scoring, Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads in 4 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed and reliability), while DeepSeek V3.2 leads in 1. On price, Claude Sonnet 5.5 runs about $4.40 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; DeepSeek V3.2 is about $0.42 and open-weight.

Where Sonnet 5.5 falls short
  • Artificial Analysis flags it as very verbose, which adds output tokens
  • Released September 2026, so its long-run track record is still short
Full Sonnet 5.5 breakdown →
Where DeepSeek V3.2 falls short
  • Shorter 128K context
  • Superseded by V4 on quality
Full DeepSeek V3.2 breakdown →

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