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Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview

Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs DeepSeek DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview — side-by-side specs.

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4.5
DeepSeek
DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview
Overview
CompanyAnthropicDeepSeek
Release dateSep 29 2025Nov 20 2024
Model type
Open sourceNoYes
Specifications
Parameters
Context window
Benchmarks
Coding
SWE-Bench Verified
77.2%
Science
GPQA Diamond
83.4%
Multimodal
MMMU
68%
Timeline
Release gapDeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview shipped 313 days before Claude Sonnet 4.5

Which is better: Claude Sonnet 4.5 or DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview don't publish scores on any of the same benchmarks, so there's no direct head-to-head comparison. DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview shipped 313 days before Claude Sonnet 4.5, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview is an open-source / open-weight model; Claude Sonnet 4.5 is proprietary.

Direct benchmark comparisons are unavailable — Claude Sonnet 4.5 and DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview don't publish scores on any of the same benchmarks.

Frequently asked questions

When was Claude Sonnet 4.5 released?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 was released by Anthropic on Sep 29 2025.
When was DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview released?
DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview was released by DeepSeek on Nov 20 2024.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview open source?
DeepSeek-R1-Lite Preview is an open-source / open-weight model released by DeepSeek. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is a proprietary model released by Anthropic.

Other comparisons