DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Claude Sonnet 5.5: API price, context and cost per task
Open-weight DeepSeek V4 Pro against Anthropic's Sonnet 5.5 - the price gap is large, and so is the difference in how stable that price is.
On output, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 5.2x cheaper ($1.91 vs $10 per million tokens). On input, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 2.1x cheaper ($0.955 vs $2 per million tokens). DeepSeek V4 Pro reads more per request: 1,048,576 tokens against 1,000,000.
Data updated 2026-11-12 - source: public OpenRouter model list, refreshed daily. Prices in USD, excluding VAT.
Specs and prices side by side
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Anthropic |
| Input, per 1M tokens | $0.955 | $2 |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $1.91 | $10 |
| Cached input, per 1M | $0.0796 | $0.1 |
| Batch (input / output) | not offered | $1 / $5 |
| Context window | 1,048,576 | 1,000,000 |
| Max output | 384,000 | 128,000 |
| Input types | text | text, images, files |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes |
| On OpenRouter since | 24 Apr 2026 | 28 Sep 2026 |
Highlighted: the cheaper price or the larger limit. "Not published" means the figure is not in the public model listing yet.
What a month of work costs
Four typical workloads at today's list prices. Reasoning models also bill their thinking as output tokens, so treat output-heavy numbers as a floor.
| Workload | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot10,000 conversations a month, about 1,500 input and 400 output tokens each | $21.97 | $70 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 3.2x cheaper |
| Coding agent300 tasks a month, about 80,000 input tokens (code context re-read across steps) and 8,000 output tokens each | $27.51 | $72 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 2.6x cheaper |
| Coding agent with caching70% of input served from the prompt cache | $12.80 | $40.08 | |
| Long-document analysis1,000 documents a month, about 50,000 tokens in and a 1,500-token summary out | $50.63 | $115 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 2.3x cheaper |
| Content drafting600 articles a month, about 3,000 tokens of brief in and 2,500 tokens of draft out | $4.59 | $18.60 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 4.1x cheaper |
Price stability over the last 30 days
- DeepSeek V4 Pro: 11 price changes since 13 Oct 2026. Input ranged $0.209 - $1.6, output $0.418 - $3.2 per million tokens. Volatile: the listed price follows whichever provider OpenRouter currently routes to, so budget with the upper end of the range.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5: no change in the last 30 days.
DeepSeek V4 Pro: price log
| Date | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-10 | $0.955 | $1.91 |
| 2026-11-08 | $0.424 | $0.848 |
| 2026-11-07 | $0.88 | $1.76 |
| 2026-11-06 | $0.955 | $1.91 |
| 2026-10-31 | $1.6 | $3.2 |
| 2026-10-30 | $0.816 | $1.63 |
| 2026-10-26 | $0.955 | $1.91 |
| 2026-10-25 | $0.209 | $0.418 |
What the vendors and benchmarks say
DeepSeek V4 Pro
"DeepSeek V4 Pro is a large-scale Mixture-of-Experts model from DeepSeek with 1.6T total parameters and 49B activated parameters, supporting a 1M-token context window."model card on OpenRouter
- Open-weight model. The same model can cost several times more or less depending on which provider serves it through OpenRouter. Source: OpenRouter provider listings
Claude Sonnet 5.5
"Claude Sonnet 5.5 is Anthropic's Sonnet-class model for well-scoped everyday work, succeeding Claude Sonnet 5 as a direct upgrade."model card on OpenRouter
- Listed on OpenRouter on 28 September 2026 as the direct successor to Claude Sonnet 5. Source: OpenRouter
Which one to pick
V4 Pro wins on raw cost by an order of magnitude at most points in the past month, and its weights are open, so you can self-host it. Sonnet 5.5 brings image and file input, fixed list pricing and Anthropic's tooling. A practical split: V4 Pro for high-volume text pipelines, Sonnet 5.5 for work that goes out without a human check.
Cheaper models with a similar context window
Models from our comparison set that cost less than both on a blended basis and support tool calling. They are not equivalent in quality - test before switching.
- GLM-5.3 (Z.ai): $0.0699 / $1.4 per million tokens, 1.05M context
- GPT-6 Luna (OpenAI): $0.1 / $0.5 per million tokens, 1.05M context
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (DeepSeek): $0.022 / $0.4 per million tokens, 1.05M context
Related reading
- DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 Appears on OpenRouter With No Announcement
- DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi and Qwen: Free AI or Cheap API?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: API Pricing, Search API and My Test
- GPT-6.1 Terra vs Claude Sonnet 5.5: Polish Test Results
- Claude Sonnet 5.5: Pricing, Benchmarks, and Tested Performance
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 Context Window: 1 Million Token Capacity
How we calculate
Prices are the public per-token list rates from OpenRouter's model list, which match the vendors' own API prices for first-party models and show the current routed price for open-weight models served by several hosts. Monthly costs multiply those rates by the token volumes in each workload; caching assumes the stated share of input is billed at the cached-input rate. Benchmarks and claims are quoted from the named sources, mostly the vendors themselves - treat them as a guide and test on your own tasks. See also the AI cost calculator and all tracked model prices.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V4 Pro or Claude Sonnet 5.5?
As of 12 Nov 2026, DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $0.955 per million input tokens and $1.91 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 and $10. DeepSeek V4 Pro is cheaper in 4 of the 4 monthly workloads we price on this page. The real bill also depends on how many reasoning tokens each model writes.
Which has the larger context window?
DeepSeek V4 Pro reads up to 1,048,576 tokens and can write up to 384,000; Claude Sonnet 5.5 reads up to 1,000,000 and writes up to 128,000.
How much does a support chatbot cost on each model?
For 10,000 conversations a month (about 15 million input and 4 million output tokens) you would pay about $21.97 on DeepSeek V4 Pro and $70 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 at list prices, before any caching or batch discounts.
Do they offer prompt caching or batch discounts?
DeepSeek V4 Pro lists cached input at $0.0796 per million. Claude Sonnet 5.5 lists cached input at $0.1 per million and a batch rate of $1 / $5. Caching matters most for agents and chatbots that resend the same context on every turn.
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