Claude Opus 4.8 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Claude Opus 4.8 
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Verdict
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) leads on quality: 64.2 vs 61.9.
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) is stronger in instruction following, knowledge, maths, reasoning.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, long context, multimodal.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) is 38× cheaper ($0.262 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) streams 4.0× faster (215 vs 54 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 64.2 | 61.9 |
| Agents & tools score | 58.8 | 59.6 |
| Coding score | 62.5 | 68.9 |
| Composite score | 68.7 | 74.5 |
| Instruction following score | 62.0 | – |
| Knowledge score | 69.3 | 61.7 |
| Long context score | 65.2 | 68.5 |
| Maths score | 69.6 | – |
| Reasoning score | 72.1 | 69.5 |
| Multimodal score | – | 61.4 |
| Blended price $/M | $10.00 | $0.262 |
| Output speed | 54 tok/s | 215 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 24.0 s | 10.5 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| GPQA Diamond | 91.0% | – |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | 80.0% | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 98.3% | – |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53.0% | – |
| Terminal-Bench | 23.6% | – |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | 20.6% | – |
| SciCode | 53.5% | – |
| APEX-Agents | 42.5% | – |
| ProofBench | 69.0% | – |
| LMArena WebDev | – | 1614 |
| LMArena Agent | – | 4.9 |
| LiveBench | 76.2% | 81.1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 89.2% | 86.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | 81.8% | 80.0% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | 50.5% | 77.3% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | 94.3% | 93.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 66.0% | 79.3% |
| LiveBench Language | 79.7% | 81.2% |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 72.0% | 70.0% |
| AA Intelligence Index | 42.0 | 39.5 |
| IFBench | 62.2% | – |
| AA-LCR | 77.7% | 84.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | – | 77.0% |
| AA-Omniscience | 28.8 | -5.3 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 58.3% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 92.0% | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 48.7% | 39.3% |
| SciCode (AA) | 54.4% | 51.9% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 94.4% | – |
| AIME 2026 | 100.0% | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | 95.5% | – |
| MathArena Apex | 81.3% | – |
| MCP Atlas | 82.2% | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | – |
| CritPt | 20.9% | 14.3% |
| GDPval (AA) | 49.5% | 56.6% |
| τ²-Bench Banking (AA) | 34.2% | – |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | 45.0% | – |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | 46.8% | – |
| FORTRESS | 18.2% | – |
| Chess Puzzles | 34.0% | – |
| EBR-bench | 28.6% | – |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36.0% | – |
| PostTrainBench | 32.9% | – |
| DeepSWE | 59.0% | – |
| LMCA | 57.5% | – |
| DTBench | 94.9% | – |
| CursorBench | 62.3% | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 2992.3 | – |
| GDP.pdf | 24.0% | – |
Data as of 2026-09-19. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Opus 4.8 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) leads on quality: 64.2 vs 61.9. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 4.8 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-19, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for coding?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores higher in coding (69 vs 63 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for agentic tasks?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores higher in agentic tasks (60 vs 59 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper: $0.262 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.8 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash streams faster: 215 against 54 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Both accept 1M tokens of context.