Claude Opus 4.8 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro
Verdict
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and DeepSeek V4 Pro (max) are level on quality (64.2 vs 64.2).
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) is stronger in coding, knowledge, maths, reasoning.
- DeepSeek V4 Pro (max) is stronger in agents & tools, composite, instruction following, long context.
- DeepSeek V4 Pro (max) is 18× cheaper ($0.544 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- DeepSeek V4 Pro (max) streams 1.5× faster (81 vs 54 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | DeepSeek V4 Pro (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 64.2 | 64.2 |
| Agents & tools score | 58.8 | 70.2 |
| Coding score | 62.5 | 58.8 |
| Composite score | 68.7 | 75.0 |
| Instruction following score | 62.0 | 74.3 |
| Knowledge score | 69.3 | 58.1 |
| Long context score | 65.2 | 66.6 |
| Maths score | 69.6 | 53.7 |
| Reasoning score | 72.1 | 70.9 |
| Blended price $/M | $10.00 | $0.544 |
| Output speed | 54 tok/s | 81 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 24.0 s | 55.6 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| GPQA Diamond | 91.0% | 89.7% |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | 80.0% | 45.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | 2.4% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 98.3% | 96.7% |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | – | 77.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53.0% | 47.0% |
| Terminal-Bench | 23.6% | – |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | 20.6% | – |
| SciCode | 53.5% | 50.0% |
| WeirdML | – | 48.9% |
| APEX-Agents | 42.5% | – |
| ProofBench | 69.0% | 16.0% |
| LiveBench | 76.2% | – |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 89.2% | – |
| LiveBench Coding | 81.8% | – |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | 50.5% | – |
| LiveBench Mathematics | 94.3% | – |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 66.0% | – |
| LiveBench Language | 79.7% | – |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 72.0% | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 42.0 | 36.3 |
| IFBench | 62.2% | 76.5% |
| AA-LCR | 77.7% | 80.3% |
| AA-Omniscience | 28.8 | 0.8 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 58.3% | 46.2% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 92.0% | 92.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 48.7% | 41.0% |
| SciCode (AA) | 54.4% | 51.0% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 94.4% | 96.2% |
| LiveCodeBench | – | 87.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | – | 87.3% |
| LegalBench | – | 80.3% |
| CorpFin | – | 61.4% |
| TaxEval | – | 72.1% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | – | 77.4% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | – | 89.4% |
| Vals Index | – | 42.9 |
| AIME 2026 | 100.0% | 96.7% |
| HMMT February 2026 | 95.5% | 93.9% |
| MathArena Apex | 81.3% | 28.1% |
| MCP Atlas | 82.2% | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | – |
| CritPt | 20.9% | 18.0% |
| GDPval (AA) | 49.5% | 49.7% |
| τ²-Bench Banking (AA) | 34.2% | 39.6% |
| ITBench SRE (AA) | – | 38.3% |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | 45.0% | 18.8% |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | – | 24.3% |
| CaseLaw v2 | – | 59.4% |
| Code Migration | – | 26.2% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | – | 51.6% |
| Finance Agent v2 | – | 44.1% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark | – | 3.8% |
| Legal Research Bench | – | 23.1% |
| MedCode | – | 40.5% |
| MedScribe | – | 75.1% |
| ProgramBench | – | 0.0% |
| Public Benefits Bench | – | 62.9% |
| SkillsBench | – | 51.3% |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | – | 49.9% |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | 46.8% | – |
| FORTRESS | 18.2% | – |
| Chess Puzzles | 34.0% | 20.0% |
| EBR-bench | 28.6% | – |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36.0% | – |
| PostTrainBench | 32.9% | – |
| DeepSWE | 59.0% | – |
| LMCA | 57.5% | 41.2% |
| DTBench | 94.9% | 90.7% |
| 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 Pro: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than DeepSeek V4 Pro?
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and DeepSeek V4 Pro (max) are level on quality (64.2 vs 64.2). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; DeepSeek V4 Pro (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 Pro for coding?
- Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in coding (63 vs 59 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than DeepSeek V4 Pro for agentic tasks?
- DeepSeek V4 Pro scores higher in agentic tasks (70 vs 59 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or DeepSeek V4 Pro?
- DeepSeek V4 Pro is cheaper: $0.544 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.8 or DeepSeek V4 Pro?
- DeepSeek V4 Pro streams faster: 81 against 54 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Both accept 1M tokens of context.