Claude Haiku 5.5 has the lower base price of these two budget models, but it charges five times more once a prompt passes 100K tokens. DeepSeek V4.1-Flash has one rate across its 1M window — doubled during weekday peak hours.
Under 100K-token prompts, Claude Haiku 5.5 is cheaper on input and output; DeepSeek wins on cache hits. Above 100K tokens Haiku bills $0.50/$2.50 per 1M, so DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is far cheaper for long prompts — even at its $0.30/$1.20 peak rate.
| DeepSeek V4.1-Flash | Claude Haiku 5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Anthropic |
| Tier | Budget | Budget |
| Input / 1M tokens | $0.15 | $0.10 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $0.60 | $0.50 |
| Cache hit / 1M | $0.003 | $0.01 |
| Cache write / 1M | — | $0.125 |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Notes | Released Sep 10, 2026, replacing V4-Flash & V4-Flash-Vision-Exp at a lower price; off-peak rate shown. Peak (01:00-04:00 & 06:00-10:00 UTC weekdays) is 2x: $0.30/$1.20 | Released Oct 7, 2026; 90% cheaper than Haiku 4.5 with a 1M context window (for prompts ≤100K tokens); >100K tokens: $0.50/$2.50, cache read $0.05, cache write $0.625 |
Claude Haiku 5.5 is 33% cheaper on input tokens ($0.10 vs $0.15 per 1M). Claude Haiku 5.5 is 17% cheaper on output tokens ($0.50 vs $0.60 per 1M).
| Workload | DeepSeek V4.1-Flash | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 10,000 conversations × (2,000 input + 400 output tokens) | $5.40 | $4.00 | Claude Haiku 5.5 saves $1.40 |
| Document Q&A 1,000 questions × (30,000 input + 800 output tokens) | $4.98 | $3.40 | Claude Haiku 5.5 saves $1.58 |
| Coding agent session 4M input tokens (90% cache hits) + 150,000 output tokens | $0.16 | $0.15 | Claude Haiku 5.5 saves $0.01 |
Standard rates per 1M tokens from data on this site. The coding-agent row assumes 90% of input is read from the prompt cache (full input price where a model has no cache rate). Cache-write fees, batch discounts and long-context surcharges listed in the notes are not included. Updated November 2, 2026.
you process long documents or histories over 100K tokens, reuse cached context heavily, or can run work off-peak.
your prompts stay under 100K tokens and you want the lower base rate with no time-of-day pricing, or you already build on Anthropic's API.
Anthropic prices any Haiku 5.5 request with a prompt over 100,000 tokens at $0.50 input, $2.50 output and $0.05 cache read per 1M, counting cached tokens toward the threshold. DeepSeek lists a single rate up to 1M tokens. A 200K-token contract review therefore costs several times more on Haiku than on V4.1-Flash off-peak, while the short-prompt tables above favour Haiku.
DeepSeek's cache hit is $0.003 per 1M off-peak with no separate write charge listed; Haiku's is $0.01 with writes at $0.125. For agents re-sending the same context, DeepSeek's cache is the cheaper of the two, though at 90% hit rates Haiku's lower output price keeps the totals close.
DeepSeek's peak windows (01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays) double its rates; Haiku's price does not vary by time. Anthropic's Batch API halves Haiku's rates, including the over-100K tier, which is the cleanest way to cut Haiku costs on bulk jobs.
Haiku 5.5 for prompts under 100K tokens; DeepSeek V4.1-Flash for longer prompts and for heavily cached input.
Yes, it lists 1M tokens of context, but prompts over 100K tokens are billed at the higher long-prompt rate.
DeepSeek's pricing page lists only cache-hit and cache-miss input rates, with no separate cache-write charge.
How we choose: prices come from each vendor's official pricing page and are re-checked every week. We take no affiliate fees, so rankings aren't for sale.