In this paper we compare various preconditioners for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. We compare the well-known balancing Neumann Neumann preconditioner used in domain decomposition methods with a so-called deflation preconditioner. We prove that the effective condition number of the deflated preconditioned system is always, i.e. for all deflation vectors and all restrictions and prolongations, below the condition number of the system preconditioned by the balancing Neumann-Neumann preconditioner. Even more, we establish that both preconditioners lead to almost the same spectra. The zero eigenvalues of the deflation preconditioned system are replaced by eigenvalues which are one if the balancing Neumann-Neumann preconditioner is used. Moreover, we proved that the A-norm of the errors of the iterates build by the deflation preconditioner is always below the A-norm of the errors of the iterates build by the balancing Neumann-Neumann preconditioner. Additionally, the amount of work of one iteration of the de ation preconditioned system is less than the amount of work of one iteration of the balancing Neumann-Neumann preconditioned system. Finally, we establish that the deflation preconditioner and the balancing Neumann-Neumann preconditioner produces the same iterates if one uses certain starting vectors. Numerical results for porous media flows emphasize the theoretical results.