Firm rents four Nvidia H200s to test '80x cheaper' DeepSeek claim
A call center consultancy rented four Nvidia H200s to run DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for Claude Code and found DeepSeek's API cheaper.
The Call Center Doctors, a call center consultancy, rented a 4x H200 box on September 27 to test DeepSeek V4.1 Flash against Claude Code agents. The box was meant to replace Opus 5.5, with the firm reporting the box cost $440.88 per day, compared to $184–$223 per day for DeepSeek's API. However, the consultancy found the box kept busy re-reading stale text, as 96% of the agents' work involved resending conversations.
The box billed whether in use or not, leading to higher costs. The consultancy concluded that renting GPUs to run an open model is not a cost-effective solution compared to subscribing to Claude Code.
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