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Claude Opus 4.5 vs DeepSeek VL2 Small

Claude Opus 4.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 38.3 to 1.4.

Anthropic · DeepSeek · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Claude Opus 4.5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 38.3 to 1.4, ranking #63 overall.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Claude Opus 4.5

  • overall performance matters — it scores 38.3 and ranks #63 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2025

Choose DeepSeek VL2 Small

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic
DeepSeek VL2 Small
DeepSeek
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
38.3
#63
1.4
#309
Reasoning
40.2
#50
-3.6
#326
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$5.00 / M
— / M
Output price
$25.00 / M
— / M
Context window
200,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

2 shared
Index
Claude Opus 4.5
DeepSeek VL2 Small
Vision
20.4#65
1.1#174
Multimodal
18.9#69
3.8#138
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

11 reported for Claude Opus 4.5 · 14 for DeepSeek VL2 Small

No common benchmarks found

Claude Opus 4.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Smalldon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Claude Opus 4.5 specifies input context (200,000 tokens). Only Claude Opus 4.5 specifies output context (64,000 tokens).

Anthropic
Claude Opus 4.5
Input200,000 tokens
Output64,000 tokens
DeepSeek
DeepSeek VL2 Small
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Fri Sep 04 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Both Claude Opus 4.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small support multimodal inputs.

They are both capable of processing various types of data, offering versatility in application.

Claude Opus 4.5

Text
Images
Audio
Video

DeepSeek VL2 Small

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude Opus 4.5 is licensed under a proprietary license, while DeepSeek VL2 Small uses deepseek.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Claude Opus 4.5

Proprietary

Closed source

DeepSeek VL2 Small

deepseek

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude Opus 4.5 was released on 2025-11-24, while DeepSeek VL2 Small was released on 2024-12-13.

Claude Opus 4.5 is 12 months newer than DeepSeek VL2 Small.

Claude Opus 4.5

Nov 24, 2025

9 months ago

11mo newer
DeepSeek VL2 Small

Dec 13, 2024

1.7 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Claude Opus 4.5 has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2025-03-31, while DeepSeek VL2 Small's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Claude Opus 4.5's training data extends to 2025-03-31, but cannot make a direct comparison without DeepSeek VL2 Small's cutoff date.

Claude Opus 4.5

Mar 2025

DeepSeek VL2 Small

—

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Claude Opus 4.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Claude Opus 4.5
✓ Preferred
DeepSeek VL2 Small
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Claude Opus 4.5 vs DeepSeek VL2 Small.

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.5 or DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Claude Opus 4.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 38.3 to 1.4. Claude Opus 4.5 is made by Anthropic and DeepSeek VL2 Small is made by DeepSeek. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Claude Opus 4.5 compare to DeepSeek VL2 Small in benchmarks?

Claude Opus 4.5 scores Tau2 Telecom: 98.2%, MMMLU: 90.8%, Tau2 Retail: 88.9%, GPQA: 87.0%, SWE-Bench Verified: 80.9%. DeepSeek VL2 Small scores DocVQA: 92.3%, ChartQA: 84.5%, OCRBench: 83.4%, TextVQA: 83.4%, MMBench: 80.3%.

What are the context window sizes for Claude Opus 4.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Claude Opus 4.5 supports 200K tokens and DeepSeek VL2 Small supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Claude Opus 4.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (38.3 vs 1.4), licensing (Proprietary vs deepseek). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Claude Opus 4.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Claude Opus 4.5 is developed by Anthropic and DeepSeek VL2 Small is developed by DeepSeek.

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