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Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs DeepSeek VL2 Small

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.0 to 1.2.

Anthropic · DeepSeek · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 58.0 to 1.2, 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 58.0 and ranks #3 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2026

Choose DeepSeek VL2 Small

  • 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 VL2 Small
DeepSeek
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
58.0
#3
1.2
#329
Reasoning
56.6
#3
-4.0
#347
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

2 shared
Index
Claude Sonnet 5.5
DeepSeek VL2 Small
Vision
40.0#3
0.6#185
Multimodal
40.1#2
3.2#149
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

47 reported for Claude Sonnet 5.5 · 14 for DeepSeek VL2 Small

No common benchmarks found

Claude Sonnet 5.5 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 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 VL2 Small
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Thu Oct 01 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Both Claude Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small support multimodal inputs.

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

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Text
Images
Audio
Video

DeepSeek VL2 Small

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude Sonnet 5.5 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 Sonnet 5.5

Proprietary

Closed source

DeepSeek VL2 Small

deepseek

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude Sonnet 5.5 was released on 2026-09-28, while DeepSeek VL2 Small was released on 2024-12-13.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 22 months newer than DeepSeek VL2 Small.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Sep 28, 2026

3 days ago

1.8yr newer
DeepSeek VL2 Small

Dec 13, 2024

1.8 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2026-06-01, while DeepSeek VL2 Small'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 VL2 Small's cutoff date.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Jun 2026

DeepSeek VL2 Small

—

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Claude Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
✓ Preferred
DeepSeek VL2 Small
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs DeepSeek VL2 Small.

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.0 to 1.2. Claude Sonnet 5.5 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 Sonnet 5.5 compare to DeepSeek VL2 Small 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 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 Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 supports 1.0M 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 Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (58.0 vs 1.2), licensing (Proprietary vs deepseek). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Claude Sonnet 5.5 and DeepSeek VL2 Small?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is developed by Anthropic and DeepSeek VL2 Small is developed by DeepSeek.

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