DeepSeek's new coding agent vs Claude: what I'd actually use to build a business website

On October 31, DeepSeek's Harness team announced a new coding agent called Super-agent in a WeChat post, and by the weekend Bloomberg was calling it a shot at Anthropic. Add the fact that DeepSeek's models cost a fraction of what most people pay for AI, and the pitch writes itself: same results, way cheaper.

Full disclosure before we go any further. I build client sites with Claude every week, and I teach owners to build their own in the Claude Site Sprint. So I went through DeepSeek's docs and price list looking for the spot where it beats what I use. It does win in a couple of places. Just not the ones most business owners care about.

What DeepSeek actually released

Two different things are getting lumped together, so let's split them up.

Super-agent is the headline. It's an open-source prototype that, per Bloomberg, watches developers' group chats for feedback on coding problems and suggests fixes without anyone asking. No published benchmarks, no product to sign up for, and it's built around how dev teams talk to each other. That's interesting to watch. It's not something a business owner can use this week.

The models underneath are what you can use today. DeepSeek's V4-Pro and V4.1-Flash each hold up to a million tokens of context, enough for a whole small website plus your brand brief in one conversation. DeepSeek also runs an Anthropic-compatible endpoint, which means Claude Code, Anthropic's coding agent, can run on DeepSeek's models by changing a few settings. DeepSeek's own setup guide points it at Flash, the cheaper one.

The price gap is real

Here's DeepSeek's own price list as of this week, per million tokens. A token is roughly three-quarters of a word.

Input it has already seen (cached) costs a fraction of a cent. Peak runs 1 to 4am and 6 to 10am UTC on weekdays. In Las Vegas this winter, that's 5 to 8pm and 10pm to 2am, Sunday through Thursday, right when a lot of owners finally sit down to work on their site.

For a dev team pushing millions of tokens a day through automated jobs, that gap is real money. For you, it mostly isn't. Claude's Pro plan runs about $20 a month, and that's what I tell Sprint owners to budget for building and running a small site. The model bill was never your big expense. Your evenings are.

What you give up for the discount

Cheaper always comes with a catch. Here are the ones that matter if you're building a business site.

It can't see your screenshots

DeepSeek's documentation for its Anthropic-compatible endpoint says V4-Pro swaps any image you send for the text "[Unsupported Image]," and Flash only takes images in your own messages. Half of building a website is looking at it. You screenshot the homepage on your phone, circle what's off, and say "fix that." Take the eyes away and you're describing layouts in words, and that's where an evening disappears.

Your data has a new home address

DeepSeek's privacy policy (last updated February 10, 2026) says it collects, processes and stores personal data in the People's Republic of China, and uses it to train its models unless you opt out. Its developer platform has a separate policy, so read that one before you sign up. For writing the CSS on a public website, you may not care. For anything that touches customer names, phone numbers or your inbox, I wouldn't send it there. And if your own privacy policy tells customers who handles their data, sending it somewhere new means updating that page first.

Setup is on you

Running Claude Code on DeepSeek means opening a DeepSeek developer account, adding API credit, and setting environment variables in a terminal. That's ten minutes for a developer. For an owner who's never opened a terminal, it's exactly the kind of friction that stalls a site for a month.

Super-agent isn't a product yet

It's a prototype, it lives in developer group chats, and there's nothing to install for a solo owner. Watch it. Don't plan your launch around it.

Where DeepSeek honestly wins

I'm not here to trash it. There are real reasons a business would pick DeepSeek:

• Big API bills on public data. If you run thousands of automated jobs a day on stuff that isn't sensitive, the price gap adds up fast, and a million tokens of context covers most of that work.
• Open weights. DeepSeek publishes its models openly, so a company with an IT team can run them on its own servers or through a US host and keep data out of China entirely. A real option, just not a weekend project.
• Pressure on everybody's prices. Every time DeepSeek undercuts the market, the big labs have to answer. Whatever you build with, you win from that fight.

What I'd do if this were my business

If you're building or fixing your own site, pick the tool you'll actually finish with, and don't switch models to save a few dollars a month. For most owners that's Claude. It sees your screenshots, it's a sign-in instead of a setup, and $20 a month is the cheapest line in your whole marketing budget.

Then keep your eye on the part that's actually getting harder. Building a site gets cheaper every month, and DeepSeek just proved it again. Getting that site picked by Google, by ChatGPT, and by the AI agents that are starting to search and book on people's behalf doesn't get any cheaper. That's where the edge is moving. I broke down how AI decides which local businesses to recommend, and what agents like Hark Pro mean for how customers find you.

Want to build it yourself and actually launch it? That's what the Claude Site Sprint is for: four live sessions, eight seats, and your site is live by day 30 or I finish it for you. Rather hand the whole thing off? Grade your site free and we'll talk about what it needs.

Sources: Bloomberg · Silicon Republic · DeepSeek API pricing · DeepSeek Anthropic API guide · DeepSeek Claude Code setup · DeepSeek privacy policy · Prices checked November 4, 2026.