Muse Spark 1.3 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash cost.
Two September 2026 releases that sit well below frontier prices, with different trade-offs: one closed and higher on independent scores, one open-weight and much cheaper.
- Input gap
- 8.3×
- Output gap
- 7.1×
- Cached gap
- 50×
- Rates verified
- 2026-10-02
Current-model note: Both models are current. Muse Spark rates are Meta's standard tier. DeepSeek rates shown are off-peak, from DeepSeek's official pricing page.
| Current model | Input / 1M | Cached / 1M | Output / 1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muse Spark 1.3Official pricing ↗ | $1.25 | $0.15 | $4.25 | 1,048,576 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 FlashOfficial pricing ↗ | $0.15 | $0.003 | $0.60 | 1,000,000 |
Rates verified 2026-10-02. The browser may refresh them from the live catalogue. Provider pricing and tiers remain authoritative.
Rates shown are DeepSeek's off-peak prices. From 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday (except Chinese public holidays), DeepSeek charges double.
Muse Spark 1.3: Provider-Calibrated UTF-8 Projection
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Provider-Calibrated UTF-8 Projection
PDF, DOCX, code, text, and data files are extracted locally and applied to both models.
Muse Spark 1.3: unavailable
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: unavailable
Prompt text, document contents, and image pixels stay in the browser.
Text, code, PDF, DOCX, images, audio, or video · 12 MB per file
Your input, measured across providers.
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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 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, including any long-context tier that applies once a request crosses its threshold.
| Workload | Input | Output | Muse Spark 1.3 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short chat turn A typical assistant exchange. | 1,000 | 500 | $0.0034 | $0.0004 | 7.50x cheaper on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
| RAG answer Five retrieved chunks plus a question. | 12,000 | 800 | $0.018 | $0.0023 | 8.07x cheaper on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
| Code review A medium pull request with surrounding files. | 60,000 | 2,000 | $0.083 | $0.010 | 8.19x cheaper on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
| Whole-document analysis A long report or contract read in one call. | 300,000 | 4,000 | $0.392 | $0.047 | 8.27x cheaper on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
| Full-context load Filling most of a one-million-token window. | 900,000 | 4,000 | $1.14 | $0.137 | 8.31x cheaper on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
"(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 50.0x: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash reads cached tokens at $0.0030 per million.
| Model | Fresh input / 1M | Cached input / 1M | Discount | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muse Spark 1.3 | $1.25 | $0.150 | 88% | 1 read |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.150 | $0.0030 | 98% | 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.
An eight-fold gap off-peak, four-fold at peak
Muse Spark 1.3 lists $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 output. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash lists $0.15 and $0.60 off-peak. That is about eight times on input and seven times on output.
During DeepSeek's peak hours the Flash rates double to $0.30 and $1.20, and the gap narrows to about four times on input and three and a half times on output. Muse Spark has no time-of-day pricing, so its cost is the same at any hour.
Independent scores favour Muse Spark, cost per task favours DeepSeek
On version 4.3 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Muse Spark 1.3 at maximum effort scores 48 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 39. That is a real gap, not a rounding difference.
The cost of a task tells the other half of the story. Artificial Analysis puts Muse Spark 1.3 at $1.60 per index task and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.27, even though it priced DeepSeek at peak rates. Both models are verbose, so measure the output your prompts really produce before trusting a per-token comparison.
Open weights and data terms
DeepSeek publishes V4.1 Flash weights under the MIT licence, so it can be self-hosted or served by other providers. Muse Spark 1.3 is available only as a hosted API. Meta has said an open-weights release of Muse Spark is on its roadmap, without a date.
Meta's Contributor tier cuts Muse Spark to $0.10 input and $0.20 output, below DeepSeek's off-peak rates, in exchange for letting Meta train on your prompts and completions. That is a data decision before it is a price decision.
Model the workload, not the marketing price.
If the cheaper model passes your evaluation, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash wins on cost at any hour. If it does not, Muse Spark 1.3 is the step up that still costs a fraction of frontier pricing.
Review calculation methodology →Measure against the model you use
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Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, Muse Spark 1.3 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?+
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at any hour. Off-peak it is about eight times cheaper on input and seven times cheaper on output. During peak hours DeepSeek doubles its rates, and the gap narrows to about four times on input.
Which scores higher on independent tests?+
Muse Spark 1.3. On version 4.3 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index it scores 48 at maximum effort, against 39 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. Per task, DeepSeek was still far cheaper: $0.27 against $1.60.
Can Muse Spark ever be cheaper than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?+
Only on Meta's Contributor tier, at $0.10 input and $0.20 output, where Meta may use your data to train future models. At standard rates DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper.
Which one can I self-host?+
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. Its weights are published under the MIT licence. Muse Spark 1.3 is available only as a hosted API for now.