Claude Haiku 5.5 vs DeepSeek Flash (4.1)
Claude Haiku 5.5 scores higher on the Models at Work leaderboard (74 vs 70 out of 100). Claude Haiku 5.5 is about 2.6× cheaper per blended million tokens ($0.20 vs $0.52).
| Claude Haiku 5.5 · Anthropic | DeepSeek Flash (4.1) · DeepSeek | |
|---|---|---|
| Leaderboard rank | #7 | #9 |
| Score (0–100) | 74 | 70 |
| Tier | Fast and cheap | Fast and cheap |
| Price per 1M tokens | $0.10 in · $0.50 out | $0.30 in · $1.20 out |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Open weights | No | Not verified |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index | 43 | — |
| Best for | Classification and extraction, Routing tiers, Latency-sensitive paths | Cheap coding tiers, Bulk generation, Experiments where data residency is not a constraint |
Choose Claude Haiku 5.5 if…
- you need classification and extraction
- you need routing tiers
- you need latency-sensitive paths
Ten cents a million and, per the people using it, smarter than the other ten-cent model; mind the 100K cliff.
Caveats: Price jumps five-fold above 100K input tokens, which commenters call an absurdly low cutoff for agent runs.
Choose DeepSeek Flash (4.1) if…
- you need cheap coding tiers
- you need bulk generation
- you need experiments where data residency is not a constraint
The reason a thousand people argued on Hacker News this week: frontier-adjacent coding for pocket change, with the caveats you would expect.
Caveats: Open-weights status and licence not verified from a primary source at time of writing. Off-peak and peak pricing differ; the cheap numbers are off-peak. Data handling terms should be read before any enterprise use.
What practitioners say
Claude Haiku 5.5: The thread had over a thousand points in a day; the recurring reports are near-perfect structured classification in production and 'noticeably smarter than GPT-6 Luna', against complaints about the 100K pricing tier.
DeepSeek Flash (4.1): The 'why isn't the industry freaking out' post hit 1,067 points; the most-upvoted replies say the price is real and the coding gap to Opus is also real.
Questions people ask
Which is better, Claude Haiku 5.5 or DeepSeek Flash (4.1)?
Claude Haiku 5.5 scores higher on the Models at Work leaderboard (74 vs 70 out of 100). Claude Haiku 5.5 is about 2.6× cheaper per blended million tokens ($0.20 vs $0.52).
When should I choose Claude Haiku 5.5 over DeepSeek Flash (4.1)?
Choose Claude Haiku 5.5 for classification and extraction, routing tiers, latency-sensitive paths. Ten cents a million and, per the people using it, smarter than the other ten-cent model; mind the 100K cliff.
When should I choose DeepSeek Flash (4.1) over Claude Haiku 5.5?
Choose DeepSeek Flash (4.1) for cheap coding tiers, bulk generation, experiments where data residency is not a constraint. The reason a thousand people argued on Hacker News this week: frontier-adjacent coding for pocket change, with the caveats you would expect.
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 5.5 or DeepSeek Flash (4.1)?
Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens on Anthropic's list price (Claude pricing, read Oct 10, 2026). DeepSeek Flash (4.1) costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens on DeepSeek's list price (DeepSeek API pricing, read Oct 10, 2026).
Scores come from the Models at Work leaderboard: Score is 0 to 100: 50% independent evals normalised within this table, 20% price-performance, 15% practitioner sentiment from Signals and community threads, 15% operational fit (context, speed, availability, open weights). Models within three points are a tie in practice. Vendor-published figures are labelled as such and never counted as independent. Prices are vendor list prices where published; blended figures assume three input tokens per output token.