Claude Fable 5 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Verdict
- Claude Fable 5 (thinking) leads on quality: 70.9 vs 61.9.
- Claude Fable 5 (thinking) is stronger in agents & tools, composite, instruction following, knowledge, reasoning.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) is stronger in long context, coding, multimodal.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) is 76× cheaper ($0.262 vs $20.00 per 1M blended).
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) streams 3.7× faster (215 vs 57 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Fable 5 (thinking) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 70.9 | 61.9 |
| Agents & tools score | 74.1 | 59.6 |
| Composite score | 92.1 | 74.5 |
| Instruction following score | 63.0 | – |
| Knowledge score | 84.9 | 61.7 |
| Long context score | 67.7 | 68.5 |
| Reasoning score | 90.8 | 69.5 |
| Coding score | – | 68.9 |
| Multimodal score | – | 61.4 |
| Blended price $/M | $20.00 | $0.262 |
| Output speed | 57 tok/s | 215 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 108.4 s | 10.5 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| LMArena WebDev | – | 1614 |
| LMArena Agent | – | 4.9 |
| LiveBench | – | 81.1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | – | 86.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | – | 80.0% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | – | 77.3% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | – | 93.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | – | 79.3% |
| LiveBench Language | – | 81.2% |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | – | 70.0% |
| AA Intelligence Index | 49.7 | 39.5 |
| IFBench | 63.5% | – |
| AA-LCR | 82.3% | 84.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | – | 77.0% |
| AA-Omniscience | 43.3 | -5.3 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 62.9% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 92.6% | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 55.5% | 39.3% |
| SciCode (AA) | 61.0% | 51.9% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 98.5% | – |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 91.4% | – |
| CritPt | 28.6% | 14.3% |
| GDPval (AA) | 56.6% | 56.6% |
| τ²-Bench Banking (AA) | 38.1% | – |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | 48.8% | – |
Data as of 2026-09-19. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Fable 5 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: questions
- Is Claude Fable 5 better than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
- Claude Fable 5 (thinking) leads on quality: 70.9 vs 61.9. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Fable 5 (thinking) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-19, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Fable 5 better than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for agentic tasks?
- Claude Fable 5 scores higher in agentic tasks (74 vs 60 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Fable 5 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper: $0.262 against $20.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Fable 5 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash streams faster: 215 against 57 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Both accept 1M tokens of context.