DeepSeek V4 Coding Benchmarked: 1/10 the Price of GPT-5.6? A Detailed Comparison
DeepSeek V4’s coding ability has improved by a large margin, and it costs only one-tenth as much as GPT-5.6.
1. Price Comparison
| Model | Input price | Output price |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 Mid | $3/1M | $12/1M |
| Claude Sonnet 4 | $3/1M | $15/1M |
| DeepSeek V4 | $0.14/1M | $0.28/1M |
2. Coding Benchmark
Task:
Write an LRU Cache in Python. DeepSeek V4 nailed it on the first try:
3. Using the API
4. Why Is DeepSeek So Cheap?
- Self-developed MoE architecture
- Highly efficient inference optimization
- The team is focused on AGI and isn’t in a hurry to monetize
5. Recommended Use Cases
- Everyday coding assistance
- Code completion
- Code review
- Learning to code
- Batch code generation
6. Things to Watch Out For
- Possible rate limiting during peak hours
- Long-context performance is slightly weaker than GPT
- Exceptionally strong at Chinese
- Recommended for use with Cursor / Cline