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DeepSeek vs ChatGPT vs Claude Cost Calculator

Compare DeepSeek, OpenAI ChatGPT, and Anthropic Claude API costs and subscription pricing. DeepSeek is 85-97% cheaper.

DeepSeek disrupted the AI market with models that match GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek R1 and V3 offer API pricing 85-97% cheaper than OpenAI and Anthropic.

This calculator compares total monthly costs across three providers โ€” DeepSeek, OpenAI (GPT-4o / GPT-4.5), and Anthropic (Claude Sonnet 4 / Opus 4) โ€” for both API usage and subscription plans. Input your monthly token volume and see exactly how much you can save.

How It Works

  1. Set your volume โ€” Monthly API requests and average tokens per request
  2. Pick a model tier โ€” Mid-tier, Reasoning, or Budget class
  3. Adjust cache rate โ€” DeepSeek offers 90% discount on cached input tokens
  4. Add subscriptions โ€” Factor in per-user subscription costs
  5. Compare costs โ€” See all three providers side by side

API Pricing (March 2026)

| Provider | Model | Input (per 1M) | Output (per 1M) | |----------|-------|----------------|------------------| | DeepSeek | V3 | $0.27 | $1.10 | | DeepSeek | R1 (Reasoning) | $0.55 | $2.19 | | OpenAI | GPT-4o | $2.50 | $10.00 | | OpenAI | o3 (Reasoning) | $10.00 | $40.00 | | OpenAI | GPT-4o-mini | $0.15 | $0.60 | | Anthropic | Claude Sonnet 4 | $3.00 | $15.00 | | Anthropic | Claude Opus 4 | $15.00 | $75.00 | | Anthropic | Claude Haiku | $0.25 | $1.25 |

Subscription Pricing

| Provider | Plan | Price | |----------|------|-------| | DeepSeek | Pro | $9.90/mo | | OpenAI | ChatGPT Plus | $20/mo | | Anthropic | Claude Pro | $20/mo |

Calculation Formula

Total Input Tokens = Requests ร— Avg Input Tokens

Total Output Tokens = Requests ร— Avg Output Tokens

API Cost = (Input Tokens ร— Input Price) + (Output Tokens ร— Output Price)

DeepSeek Cache Discount = Input Cost ร— (1 โˆ’ CacheHitRate ร— 0.9)

Total Cost = API Cost + (Subscription ร— Users)

Savings = OpenAI/Claude Total โˆ’ DeepSeek Total

Pro Tips

  • โ€ข DeepSeek V3 and R1 consistently score within 2-5% of GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet on major benchmarks while being 85-97% cheaper
  • โ€ข DeepSeek's prompt caching gives 90% discount on repeated input tokens โ€” great for apps with system prompts or few-shot examples
  • โ€ข For simple classification, extraction, or summarization tasks, budget models (GPT-4o-mini, Haiku) may be the best value
  • โ€ข OpenAI and Anthropic offer enterprise agreements with volume discounts โ€” contact sales for 100M+ tokens/month
  • โ€ข Consider latency requirements: DeepSeek API has higher latency from China-based servers, though global endpoints are improving
  • โ€ข A hybrid strategy works well: DeepSeek for bulk/batch processing, GPT-4o or Claude for latency-sensitive user-facing features

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DeepSeek vs ChatGPT vs Claude Cost Calculator 2026 โ€” API Pricing Comparison | AiPromto