DeepSeek V4 vs Claude Haiku 4.5
DeepSeek V4 and Claude Haiku 4.5 side by side: what each one is, verified plan pricing and install commands where we have them, and the full review of each.
DeepSeek V4
Open weightsDeepSeek's open-weights frontier family, previewed April 24, 2026. V4-Pro is 1.6T total / 49B active params; V4-Flash is 284B / 13B. 1M context standard. Weights on Hugging Face.
Claude Haiku 4.5
Anthropic's smallest Claude 4.5 model, released October 2025 and succeeded by Haiku 5.5 in October 2026. Sonnet 4-level coding at one-third the cost. $1/$5 per million tokens.
At a glance
| Field | | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | AI Models | AI Models |
| Website | api-docs.deepseek.com | anthropic.com |
| Pricing | deepseek-v4-pro - peak: $1.32/1M input (cache miss), $0.044/1M input (cache hit), $3.96/1M output; off-peak is half; deepseek-flash (DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017; the legacy deepseek-v4-flash name routes here) - peak: $0.30/1M input (cache miss), $0.006/1M input (cache hit), $1.20/1M output; off-peak is half; Peak hours are 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday; all other hours, weekends and Chinese public holidays are off-peak; Open weights - free to download from Hugging Face under the MIT License | Claude API - $1/MTok input, $5/MTok output; Prompt caching - $1.25/MTok 5-minute cache write, $2/MTok 1-hour cache write, $0.10/MTok cache read; Batch API - 50% discount on input and output |
| Install | Not verified yet | pip install anthropic or npm install @anthropic-ai/sdk |
| Models | The API serves deepseek-v4-pro and deepseek-flash, now DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017. Both have a 1M context window, up to 384K output, and thinking (the default) or non-thinking modes with low, high, or max effort. Point an OpenAI-format client at https://api.deepseek.com or an Anthropic-format client at https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic and set the model name. | A single model, claude-haiku-4-5 (alias for the pinned snapshot claude-haiku-4-5-20251001), with a 200K context window, 64K max output and manual extended thinking via budget_tokens. It is also on Amazon Bedrock (anthropic.claude-haiku-4-5), Google Cloud (claude-haiku-4-5@20251001), Microsoft Foundry and Claude Platform on AWS. |
| Last verified | November 5, 2026 | October 29, 2026 |
In Depth
DeepSeek V4
DeepSeek V4 is the open-weights frontier release of mid-2026, shipped in two mixture-of-experts variants: DeepSeek-V4-Pro at 1.6T total / 49B active parameters and DeepSeek-V4-Flash at 284B total / 13B active. A 1M token context window is now the default across all official DeepSeek services, and the weights are open-sourced on Hugging Face. The API supports both OpenAI ChatCompletions and Anthropic Messages formats, which makes it close to a drop-in swap in existing codebases, and the legacy `deepseek-chat` and `deepseek-reasoner` endpoints retire after July 24, 2026. For teams that want self-hostable, frontier-adjacent capability at a fraction of closed-model pricing, V4 became the open-weights reference point of mid-2026.
Claude Haiku 4.5
Claude Haiku 4.5 is the Anthropic small model released in October 2025 and available through the Claude API as `claude-haiku-4-5`. Its successor, Claude Haiku 5.5, shipped on October 7, 2026. It delivers coding performance comparable to Claude Sonnet 4 at roughly a third of the cost, and runs up to 4-5x faster than Sonnet 4.5. It is the first Haiku model to ship with extended thinking, computer use, and context awareness, putting agent-grade capabilities into the cheapest tier of the Claude family. Pricing is $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens, making it the default choice for high-volume, latency-sensitive workloads and multi-agent swarms where cost per call compounds quickly. Available on the Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, and Vertex AI.
FAQ
Answers taken from each tool's verified fact sheet, with the date it was last checked.
How much does DeepSeek V4 cost?
As of November 5, 2026: deepseek-v4-pro - peak: $1.32/1M input (cache miss), $0.044/1M input (cache hit), $3.96/1M output; off-peak is half; deepseek-flash (DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017; the legacy deepseek-v4-flash name routes here) - peak: $0.30/1M input (cache miss), $0.006/1M input (cache hit), $1.20/1M output; off-peak is half; Peak hours are 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday; all other hours, weekends and Chinese public holidays are off-peak; Open weights - free to download from Hugging Face under the MIT License. Source: DeepSeek V4 Preview Release, DeepSeek Models & Pricing, DeepSeek API Change Log, DeepSeek Thinking Mode guide, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash announcement, deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Pro on Hugging Face.
Which models does DeepSeek V4 use?
As of November 5, 2026: The API serves deepseek-v4-pro and deepseek-flash, now DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017. Both have a 1M context window, up to 384K output, and thinking (the default) or non-thinking modes with low, high, or max effort. Point an OpenAI-format client at https://api.deepseek.com or an Anthropic-format client at https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic and set the model name.
How much does Claude Haiku 4.5 cost?
As of October 29, 2026: Claude API - $1/MTok input, $5/MTok output; Prompt caching - $1.25/MTok 5-minute cache write, $2/MTok 1-hour cache write, $0.10/MTok cache read; Batch API - 50% discount on input and output. Source: Claude Haiku 4.5 model page, Model deprecations, Claude Haiku 5.5 model page, Get started with Claude, anthropic-sdk-typescript README.
How do I install Claude Haiku 4.5?
Official install commands as of October 29, 2026: pip install anthropic or npm install @anthropic-ai/sdk.
Which models does Claude Haiku 4.5 use?
As of October 29, 2026: A single model, claude-haiku-4-5 (alias for the pinned snapshot claude-haiku-4-5-20251001), with a 200K context window, 64K max output and manual extended thinking via budget_tokens. It is also on Amazon Bedrock (anthropic.claude-haiku-4-5), Google Cloud (claude-haiku-4-5@20251001), Microsoft Foundry and Claude Platform on AWS.
