I can second this. Deepseek is great for mundane work day tasks.
I use it via claude code, just pointing the api to deepseek.
It's also not a clear "Opus 4.8 >> DS 4 Pro", I've done 16 tasks in 4 days across the two, and while Opus was indeed on average better, both models performed well being able to handle most of my workload.
In fact DeepSeek was _significantly_ better on 3 task out of 16 and Opus was _significantly_ better only in 2 out of 16.
So why I still claim Opus 4.8 to be the winner? Because the few times that DS failed or got off the rails, it failed much harder and needed several prompts to be realigned on the actual tasks.
Another thing at which Deepseek is significantly behind is code reviewing. Opus is more intelligent/thorough, Deepseek will sometimes generate bogus or low quality feedback.
And the last thing at which Opus is better, period, is vibe coding. If you want to implement features end-to-end it handles ultracode flows quite better. I don't vibe code at work, but I do so with personal projects.
But the cost concern is real. I've spent sub 2$ in 5 days of work using DS 4 Pro, which is on average just 4 queries to Anthropic.
Give me a slightly better DS 4 (it is still in preview and training isn't finished) and I may ditch Anthropic for good.
Have you tried glm 5.2? It’s better than ds4pro and very close to opus4.6. Alot more expensive than ds4pro/mimo but significantly chesper than opus 4.6 for 90% of the quality
I use it via claude code, just pointing the api to deepseek.
It's also not a clear "Opus 4.8 >> DS 4 Pro", I've done 16 tasks in 4 days across the two, and while Opus was indeed on average better, both models performed well being able to handle most of my workload.
In fact DeepSeek was _significantly_ better on 3 task out of 16 and Opus was _significantly_ better only in 2 out of 16.
So why I still claim Opus 4.8 to be the winner? Because the few times that DS failed or got off the rails, it failed much harder and needed several prompts to be realigned on the actual tasks.
Another thing at which Deepseek is significantly behind is code reviewing. Opus is more intelligent/thorough, Deepseek will sometimes generate bogus or low quality feedback.
And the last thing at which Opus is better, period, is vibe coding. If you want to implement features end-to-end it handles ultracode flows quite better. I don't vibe code at work, but I do so with personal projects.
But the cost concern is real. I've spent sub 2$ in 5 days of work using DS 4 Pro, which is on average just 4 queries to Anthropic.
Give me a slightly better DS 4 (it is still in preview and training isn't finished) and I may ditch Anthropic for good.