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Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.1 to -3.0.

Anthropic · DeepSeek · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 58.1 to -3.0, ranking #3 overall.

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

Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5

  • overall performance matters — it scores 58.1 and ranks #3 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2026

Choose DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

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

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
DeepSeek
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
58.1
#3
-3.0
#349
Reasoning
56.6
#3
-2.6
#339
Coding
48.9
#2
-4.6
#266
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$2.00 / M
— / M
Output price
$10.00 / M
— / M
Context window
1,000,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Claude Sonnet 5.5
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Math
36.9#34
5.4#273
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

47 reported for Claude Sonnet 5.5 · 4 for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

No common benchmarks found

Claude Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5Bdon'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 Sonnet 5.5 specifies input context (1,000,000 tokens). Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 specifies output context (128,000 tokens).

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Tue Sep 29 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Claude Sonnet 5.5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B does not.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Text
Images
Audio
Video

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is licensed under a proprietary license, while DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B uses MIT.

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

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Proprietary

Closed source

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

MIT

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude Sonnet 5.5 was released on 2026-09-28, while DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B was released on 2025-01-20.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 21 months newer than DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Sep 28, 2026

1 days ago

1.7yr newer
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Jan 20, 2025

1.7 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2026-06-01, while DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Claude Sonnet 5.5's training data extends to 2026-06-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B's cutoff date.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Jun 2026

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

—

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Claude Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
✓ Preferred
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B.

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.1 to -3.0. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is made by Anthropic and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B 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 Sonnet 5.5 compare to DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B in benchmarks?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores BenchCAD (with Python tool): 96.3%, ArXivMath (with tools): 95.2%, Global-MMLU: 92.1%, MILU: 91.6%, SWE-bench Multilingual: 90.3%. DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B scores MATH-500: 83.9%, AIME 2024: 52.7%, GPQA: 33.8%, LiveCodeBench: 16.9%.

What are the context window sizes for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 supports 1.0M tokens and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B 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 Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (58.1 vs -3.0), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Proprietary vs MIT). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Claude Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is developed by Anthropic and DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is developed by DeepSeek.

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