Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale
Head-to-head API pricing and cost comparison between Anthropic’s Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 and DeepSeek’s DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale. Prices auto-refresh daily from OpenRouter.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale is 87% cheaper for input tokens; DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale also wins on output tokens.
Side-by-side comparison
| Spec | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale |
|---|---|---|
| Input price (per 1M) | $3.00 | $0.40 |
| Cached input (per 1M) | $0.30 | $0.20 |
| Output price (per 1M) | $15.00 | $1.20 |
| Batch input (per 1M) | $1.50 | — |
| Batch output (per 1M) | $7.50 | — |
| Reasoning price (per 1M) | — | — |
| Context window | 1000K | 164K |
| Vision support | Yes | No |
| Caching support | Yes | Yes |
| Batch API | Yes | No |
| Reasoning capability | No | No |
Monthly cost at volume
Estimated monthly API spend at common production traffic levels (input/output tokens per request shown).
| Volume | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
1K req/day 500in / 200out tokens | $135.00 | $13.20 | $121.80 DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale wins |
10K req/day 1500in / 500out tokens | $3,600 | $360.00 | $3,240 DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale wins |
100K req/day 3000in / 800out tokens | $63,000 | $6,480 | $56,520 DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale wins |
1M req/day 8000in / 2000out tokens | $1,620,000 | $168,000 | $1,452,000 DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale wins |
Adjust input/output token counts, request volume, batch & cached pricing.
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Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale?
For input tokens, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale is roughly 87% cheaper at $0.40/1M vs $3.00/1M. For output tokens, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale wins at $1.20/1M. Real-world cost depends on your input/output ratio — use the calculator to model your actual workload.
What’s the context window difference?
Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a context window of 1000K tokens. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale offers 164K tokens. Larger context windows are valuable for long documents, RAG pipelines, and multi-turn conversations — but they come with higher input-token bills if you fill them every request.
Should I use Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale?
Choose Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you’re already on the Anthropic stack, want broad ecosystem support, or prefer its feature set. Choose DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale for DeepSeek’s ecosystem, or its cheaper input tokens. Run a small benchmark on your own prompts before committing — price is only one axis.
How are these prices kept current?
Prices are pulled directly from OpenRouter’s public models API once every 24 hours via a Convex cron job, then normalized to per-1M-token figures. Last refresh: Apr 21, 2026.