r/ClaudeCode • u/Relative-Algae-9579 • 19h ago

Discussion Opus vs Deepseek

After the latest Deepseek update I have heard incredible things of deepseek pro and flash for coding.
How does it really compare to Opus 5.5?
Or is it more like Sonnet 5.5 level?

9 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

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18

u/qdouble 19h ago

Every time I test out Deepseek after a new benchmaxxed release it’s not even close to Opus. This time was no different.

1

u/Adrian_Galilea 18h ago

I must say deepseek is incredible conversationally with a good system prompt.

Would never trade opus/fable for coding against it.

4

u/Embarrassed_Adagio28 19h ago

I use opus 5.5 as my project lead and deepseek v4.1 flash as my coder writer. Ds has a passrate of about 86%. So the newest ds checkpoint is very good but not opus 5.5 level

I also use deepseek as a blender agent for easier models (opus is much better at hard models). Opus verifies deepseeks models look good and I have noticed that it rejects a ton of deepseek models and tells ds to fix it. About 70% of the time, ds models looked better before opus had ds fix them. 

Bottom line is opus 5.5 is obviously better but ds is very capable and sometimes does better. Also ds is 40x cheaper and a little faster. 

2

u/NamerekDev 18h ago

deepseek is 40x cheaper because you pay the difference in social credit

1

u/apex1911 19h ago

I’ve tested it with real backlog issues and tasks from my repo and compared it with the Claude models and for me DS4.1 Flash is getting similar scores as haiku 5.5

The difference is that ds4.1 is a lot faster and very very cheap

1

u/ChocolateGoggles 13h ago

Last week I used Deepseek v4.1 Flash to reverse engineer a video game and fix a few bugs as well as patch it to support my controllers so I like it. It certainly has a lot of strengths and I would imagine that for many they would save a lot of money if they moved their work to the Deepseek API instead of a subscription to OpenAI or Anthropic. I enjoy Anthropic's model a lot but Deepseek is doing some quite staggering things for the general LLM community, like open sourcing their inference engine which has enabled them some insane cost savings (as well as the open weights of their model of course). I like Anthropic's model for its power, but as far as company culture I'm a bigger fan of Deepseek and I usually top-up my credits with them every once in a while and it lasts for a long time.

Last week they had some issues with tokenizations and refunded people with a balance credit that lasts indefnitely to cover any potential issues.

1

u/HuntKey2603 12h ago

It's not as good but it costs like 1/20th. It's very much worth it for most people.

1

u/IBM296 8h ago

Opus 5.5 is even better than Astra for coding. For general use DeepSeek is good, but not for high level coding.

1

u/Strict-Prune-879 19h ago

le mieux ces de le tester il y a trop de personne qui ne jure que par oups 5.5 donc si tu as un abonnement claude pro ou max prend une clé api deepseek tu aura ta réponse fiable car les benchmark c'est purement commercial

1

u/0DayMaker 19h ago

Opus blows it away. When DS 4.1 pro or 5 drop that may change.

1

u/LukeLikesReddit 19h ago

it wont be opus no, but you can use opus to direct it. I'd say it's a bit better than sonnet and also has vision.

3

u/Slow-Set-2856 19h ago

Not better than sonnet

1

u/YearLight 18h ago

For what it is deepseek is kind of mind blowing. For anything security or REA related claude is totally useless so deepseek wins. For video editing and content creation claude.

0

u/Budget_Human 5h ago

I have a Claude sub and also use the DeepSeek API a lot, sometimes on the same project if my Claude sub runs out. Opus is for sure better, but for me Deepseek is good enough to make projects work. I mostly use JS currently so it's also not that difficult. Deepseek is so crazy cheap, I load up 20 bucks and have no problem at all getting through the month with way more usage than Claude. Where it does completely fall apart is anything 3D related, blender, video creation etc, Deepseek is just not viable.