Model comparison

Muse Spark 1.3 vs Qwen3-Max

Meta against Qwen, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 26, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

Meta

Muse Spark 1.3

Frontier

Qwen

Qwen3-Max

Frontier

AI model capability comparison
Specification	Muse Spark 1.3	Qwen3-Max
Provider
Provider	Meta	Qwen
Tier
Tier	Frontier	Frontier
Context window
Context window	Winner: 1.05M	262K
Max output
Max output	131K	Not verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens
Input / 1M tokens	$1.25	Winner: $1.20
Output / 1M tokens
Output / 1M tokens	Winner: $4.25	$6
Weights
Weights	Closed	Closed
Parameters
Parameters	Meta frontier model	>1T (proprietary)
Reasoning levels
Reasoning levels	minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, max	low, high, max
Modalities
Modalities	text, image, video, audio, pdf	text
API model id
API model id	muse-spark-1.3	qwen3-max
Released
Released	September 2, 2026	September 23, 2025
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] (2026-09-26)
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] (2026-09-26)	48.1	Not verifiedUnverified
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-09-26)
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-09-26)	Not verifiedUnverified	15.6
DeepSWE 1.1 (2026-09-02)
DeepSWE 1.1 (2026-09-02)	75.4	Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-09-03)
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-09-03)	88.8	Not verifiedUnverified

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

2026-09-26
Artificial Analysis (AA-estimated)
Composite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score.
Comparable with caveatOnly same-version scores are comparable. v4.3.2 was rebaselined (the top score fell from 66 on v4.1.1 to ~58), so v4.1.1 figures must not be compared with v4.3.2 figures — check measuredAt.
2026-09-03
Meta launch table (transcribed by explainx.ai) (Vendor self-report; absent from the official tbench.ai leaderboard)
Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment.
Comparable with caveatNot comparable with Terminal-Bench 3.0 or 4.0 (different task sets) or v1; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
2026-09-02
Meta launch table (Thinking mode: max — self-reported; not broadly available and NOT on the official Datacurve leaderboard)
Agentic software engineering: pass@1 on real repo tasks with reported cost per completed task.
Directly comparable

Pricing tiers

Muse Spark 1.3: $1.25/$4.25 per MTok on Meta's Model API (Standard tier; cached input $0.15); a $0.10/$0.20 'contributor' tier applies when your data is used for training. Meta's pricing page lists no long-context premium and no scheduled price change.

Qwen3-Max: Model Studio International $1.20/$6.00 per MTok up to 32K input; $2.40/$12 for 32K–128K; $3/$15 for 128K–256K. The qwen3-max alias now equals qwen3-max-2026-01-23. Proprietary, API-only.

FrontierRecord checked September 26, 2026

Muse Spark 1.3

Muse Spark 1.3 is Meta's September 2026 frontier refresh — a self-reported DeepSWE 1.1 field leader at $1.25/$4.25, with a 1M-token context aimed at autonomous agent workflows.

Best for

Long-horizon coding agents
Frontier quality below frontier pricing
Meta ecosystem

Watch out

The headline 75.4% DeepSWE score comes from the 'max' thinking mode, which is not broadly available yet and is pending independent verification. The 131,072 output cap is per third-party API docs — Meta's own spec page does not publish it. Closed weights.

FrontierRecord checked September 26, 2026

Qwen3-Max

Qwen3-Max is Alibaba's proprietary 1-trillion-parameter API model with multimodal input.

Best for

Agentic coding
Multimodal knowledge work
Long-context via API

Watch out

Max line is proprietary/API-only (no published weights). Per-provider prices differ.

When the cheaper one wins

Muse Spark 1.3 is cheaper on output at $4.25 per million tokens against $6 for Qwen3-Max — about 1.4×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output.
1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 2 days ago.
Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Muse Spark 1.3: Meta — Introducing Muse Spark 1.3 (accessed 2026-09-03)
Muse Spark 1.3: Meta developer — Muse Spark pricing ($1.25/$4.25) (accessed 2026-09-03)
Muse Spark 1.3: VentureBeat — Muse Spark 1.3 best results need a config developers can't broadly use yet (accessed 2026-09-03)
Muse Spark 1.3: HaiMaker — muse-spark-1.3 (131,072 max output tokens) (accessed 2026-09-05)
Muse Spark 1.3: Promptfoo — Meta provider docs (muse-spark-1.3 max_tokens ceiling) (accessed 2026-09-05)
Muse Spark 1.3: Meta Model API — pricing and rate limits ($1.25/$4.25, cached $0.15) (accessed 2026-09-26)
Muse Spark 1.3: Meta Model API — models (1,048,576 context; text/image/video/audio/PDF input) (accessed 2026-09-26)
Qwen3-Max: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio pricing (qwen3-max tiers) (accessed 2026-09-26)
Qwen3-Max: Alibaba Cloud — Qwen3-Max: Just Scale It (accessed 2026-09-26)
Qwen3-Max: AI Release Tracker — Qwen3-Max (accessed 2026-08-29)

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Muse Spark 1.3 · Qwen3-Max

Common questions

Muse Spark 1.3 vs Qwen3-Max

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Muse Spark 1.3 or Qwen3-Max cheaper for input?

Qwen3-Max is cheaper at $1.20 per million input tokens, against $1.25 for Muse Spark 1.3 — roughly 1.0× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Muse Spark 1.3 has tiered pricing: $1.25/$4.25 per MTok on Meta's Model API (Standard tier; cached input $0.15); a $0.10/$0.20 'contributor' tier applies when your data is used for training. Meta's pricing page lists no long-context premium and no scheduled price change. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Model Studio International $1.20/$6.00 per MTok up to 32K input; $2.40/$12 for 32K–128K; $3/$15 for 128K–256K. The qwen3-max alias now equals qwen3-max-2026-01-23. Proprietary, API-only.

Is Muse Spark 1.3 or Qwen3-Max cheaper for output?

Muse Spark 1.3 is cheaper at $4.25 per million output tokens, against $6 for Qwen3-Max — roughly 1.4× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Muse Spark 1.3 has tiered pricing: $1.25/$4.25 per MTok on Meta's Model API (Standard tier; cached input $0.15); a $0.10/$0.20 'contributor' tier applies when your data is used for training. Meta's pricing page lists no long-context premium and no scheduled price change. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Model Studio International $1.20/$6.00 per MTok up to 32K input; $2.40/$12 for 32K–128K; $3/$15 for 128K–256K. The qwen3-max alias now equals qwen3-max-2026-01-23. Proprietary, API-only.

Which has the larger context window, Muse Spark 1.3 or Qwen3-Max?

Muse Spark 1.3 accepts 1.05M tokens against 262K for Qwen3-Max. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.

Do Muse Spark 1.3 and Qwen3-Max support the same reasoning levels?

Muse Spark 1.3 exposes minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, max, while Qwen3-Max exposes low, high, max.

Should I use Muse Spark 1.3 or Qwen3-Max?

Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Muse Spark 1.3 suits long-horizon coding agents; Qwen3-Max suits agentic coding.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

Input price: Qwen3-Max costs $1.20 per 1M tokens versus $1.25 for Muse Spark 1.3 — a 1x difference at the headline tier.
Context: Muse Spark 1.3 takes 1.05M against 262K for Qwen3-Max — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.

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