Muse Spark 1.3 vs Claude Opus 5 cost.
Meta's newest model sits a few points behind Claude Opus 5 on the main independent index, for a fraction of the price. The question is whether those points matter for your task.
- Input gap
- 4×
- Output gap
- 5.9×
- Cached gap
- 3.3×
- Rates verified
- 2026-10-02
Current-model note: Both models are current. Muse Spark 1.3 was released on 2 September 2026. Rates are Meta's standard tier and Anthropic's standard API price, from the maintained catalogue.
| Current model | Input / 1M | Cached / 1M | Cache write / 1M | Output / 1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muse Spark 1.3Official pricing ↗ | $1.25 | $0.15 | — | $4.25 | 1,048,576 |
| Claude Opus 5Official pricing ↗ | $5.00 | $0.50 | $6.25 | $25.00 | 1,000,000 |
Rates verified 2026-10-02. The browser may refresh them from the live catalogue. Provider pricing and tiers remain authoritative.
Muse Spark 1.3: Provider-Calibrated UTF-8 Projection
Claude Opus 5: Provider-Calibrated UTF-8 Projection
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Muse Spark 1.3: unavailable
Claude Opus 5: documented formula
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Workload & Scaling Planner +
What five real workloads actually cost
Headline per-token prices rarely decide a bill. Request shape does. These figures are calculated from the verified rates for Muse Spark 1.3 and Claude Opus 5, including any long-context tier that applies once a request crosses its threshold.
| Workload | Input | Output | Muse Spark 1.3 | Claude Opus 5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short chat turn A typical assistant exchange. | 1,000 | 500 | $0.0034 | $0.018 | 5.19x cheaper on Muse Spark 1.3 |
| RAG answer Five retrieved chunks plus a question. | 12,000 | 800 | $0.018 | $0.080 | 4.35x cheaper on Muse Spark 1.3 |
| Code review A medium pull request with surrounding files. | 60,000 | 2,000 | $0.083 | $0.350 | 4.19x cheaper on Muse Spark 1.3 |
| Whole-document analysis A long report or contract read in one call. | 300,000 | 4,000 | $0.392 | $1.60 | 4.08x cheaper on Muse Spark 1.3 |
| Full-context load Filling most of a one-million-token window. | 900,000 | 4,000 | $1.14 | $4.60 | 4.03x cheaper on Muse Spark 1.3 |
"(tier)" marks a request that crossed a long-context threshold, so it is billed above the headline rate. Output length is the assumption most worth changing for your own case: paste a real prompt into the calculator above to replace these with your numbers.
The cached-input rate is the number most comparisons miss
Agents, chat threads and RAG pipelines resend the same system prompt and context on every call. Those repeated tokens bill at the cached rate, not the headline rate, so a model can be cheaper on paper and more expensive in production. Here the gap is 3.3x: Muse Spark 1.3 reads cached tokens at $0.150 per million.
| Model | Fresh input / 1M | Cached input / 1M | Discount | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muse Spark 1.3 | $1.25 | $0.150 | 88% | 1 read |
| Claude Opus 5 | $5.00 | $0.500 | 90% | 1 read |
Break-even assumes a cache write costs about 1.25x the base input rate, which is what OpenAI and Anthropic currently document for a short time-to-live. It answers one question: how many times a cached prefix must be re-read before caching is cheaper than paying full price each call. Above that count, every further read saves the discount shown.
Four times cheaper on input, six times on output
Muse Spark 1.3 lists $1.25 per million input tokens, $0.15 cached and $4.25 output. Claude Opus 5 lists $5, $0.50 and $25. That is a four-fold gap on input and close to a six-fold gap on output.
Output is where the difference compounds. An agent that writes long answers or code on every turn spends most of its budget on output tokens, so the six-fold gap, not the four-fold one, is the number to plan with.
Both accept roughly one million tokens of context, so neither forces a retrieval design on long documents.
Three points behind, at a quarter of the cost per task
On version 4.3.2 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Claude Opus 5 at maximum effort scores 51 and Muse Spark 1.3 at maximum effort scores 48. That places Opus 5 seventh and Muse Spark 1.3 thirteenth of the 200 models in the comparison.
The cost of reaching those scores is far apart. Artificial Analysis puts Muse Spark 1.3 at $1.60 per index task and Claude Opus 5 at $5.86. Both are verbose: Opus 5 used 140 million output tokens to run the index and Muse Spark 1.3 used 170 million, against a median of 92 million.
Muse Spark 1.3 also answers faster once it starts, at about 240 output tokens per second against about 61 for Opus 5. Neither is quick to start: time to first token was about 22 seconds for Muse Spark 1.3 and about 54 seconds for Opus 5 at maximum effort.
The Contributor tier changes the price, and the terms
Meta also sells Muse Spark 1.3 on a Contributor tier at $0.10 per million input tokens, $0.002 cached and $0.20 output, roughly a twentieth of the standard price. The condition is that Meta may use your prompts and completions to train future Meta models.
That rules it out for confidential data, customer content, and anything covered by a data-processing agreement. It is also capped at 100 requests per minute, against 3,000 on the standard tier. For public or synthetic data it is an unusually cheap option.
The calculator on this page uses the standard tier, because that is the tier most production workloads can accept.
Model the workload, not the marketing price.
Muse Spark 1.3 is four times cheaper on input and about six times cheaper on output. Run your hardest real tasks on both before switching, because the remaining quality gap is small on average but not evenly spread.
Review calculation methodology →Measure against the model you use
Other comparisons worth running
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Frequently asked questions
How much cheaper is Muse Spark 1.3 than Claude Opus 5?+
At standard rates Muse Spark 1.3 is four times cheaper on input ($1.25 against $5 per million tokens) and about six times cheaper on output ($4.25 against $25). Artificial Analysis measured $1.60 per index task for Muse Spark 1.3 against $5.86 for Claude Opus 5.
Is Muse Spark 1.3 as capable as Claude Opus 5?+
Close, but not equal. On version 4.3.2 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Claude Opus 5 at maximum effort scores 51 and Muse Spark 1.3 at maximum effort scores 48. Test both on your own hardest tasks before deciding.
What is the Muse Spark Contributor tier?+
A discounted tier at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.20 output. In exchange, Meta may use your prompts and completions to train future Meta models, and the limit is 100 requests per minute. Do not use it for confidential or customer data.
Is Muse Spark open-weight?+
Not yet. Meta has said a Muse Spark open-weights release is on its roadmap, but Muse Spark 1.3 is available only as a hosted API.