Claude Haiku 4.5 vs DeepSeek R1

For a typical workload (100,000 requests / mo), DeepSeek R1 is the cheapest — 54% less than the priciest here ($146.00/mo vs $320.00/mo).

Projected monthly cost

Very low latency for high-volume, simple tasks — classification, short summaries, and lightweight chat where response time matters more than depth.

Noticeably weaker on multi-step reasoning and long-context synthesis; pairing with a larger model for escalation is common.

Chain-of-thought reasoning competitive with closed flagship models on math and logic benchmarks, at open-weight pricing.

Emits long reasoning traces that inflate output token counts and cost — cap reasoning length or use a distilled variant for latency-sensitive paths.

Vendor list rates · per-request examples assume 1,200 input + 400 output tokens.