Claude Opus 4.8 vs Muse Spark 1.2
Full profiles: Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic) and Muse Spark 1.2 (Meta): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 12 sources
As of 25 Oct 2026, Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (63.3 vs 63.2 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±6.6 margin of error), and Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) costs 5.0× less, which makes it the better buy for most workloads. Claude Opus 4.8 leads in every category we measure both in.
Claude Opus 4.8 benchmarks max Anthropic
Muse Spark 1.2 benchmarks xhigh MetaOpen in the comparison toolWhich to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Claude Opus 4.8 | 59 vs 55 category score; SciCode 53.5% vs 57.4% | Medium |
| Agents & tool use | Claude Opus 4.8 | 57 vs 55 category score; τ³-Banking (AA) 34.2% vs 34.9% | Medium |
| Maths | Either | 68 vs 67 category score; LiveBench Mathematics 94.3% vs 91.2% | Either |
| Reasoning | Either | 69 vs 69 category score; CritPt 20.9% vs 17.7% | Either |
| Knowledge | Either | 67 vs 67 category score; SimpleQA Verified 53.0% vs 60.3% | Either |
| Long documents | Either | 64 vs 65 category score; AA-LCR 77.7% vs 79.0% | Either |
| Chat quality (human preference) | – | Only Muse Spark 1.2 has an Arena rating (69 category score) | Not comparable |
| Lowest cost | Muse Spark 1.2 | $2.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.092 vs $0.400 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Muse Spark 1.2 | 17.6 s (Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh)) vs 29.3 s (Claude Opus 4.8 (max)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (63.3 vs 63.2, within the ±6.6 margin).
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, instruction following, knowledge, maths.
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) is stronger in long context, reasoning, human preference, multimodal.
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) is 5.0× cheaper ($2.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) streams 4.9× faster (307 vs 63 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.8 | Muse Spark 1.2 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | Meta |
| Released | 28 May 2026 | 5 Aug 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Compared at | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 | $1.25 / $4.25 / $0.150 |
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 68.8 | 69.3 | level |
| Coding | 58.9 | 55.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Agents & tools | 56.5 | 55.4 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Maths | 68.1 | 67.3 | level |
| Knowledge | 66.9 | 66.7 | level |
| Instruction following | 62.1 | – | not comparable |
| Human preference | – | 68.6 | not comparable |
| Multimodal | – | 65.2 | not comparable |
| Long context | 63.8 | 64.5 | level |
| Composite | 76.2 | 73.8 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
Where sources disagree
Across the 31 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.8 leads 18, Muse Spark 1.2 leads 13. Independent sources split: Claude Opus 4.8 leads on AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2; Muse Spark 1.2 leads on Arena Text.
| Overall index | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 63.3 | 63.2 | neck and neck |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | 41.8 | 39.6 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Arena Text | 1482† | 1491 | Muse Spark 1.2 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.
| Measure | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $2.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 | $1.25 / $4.25 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.500 | $0.150 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0095 | $0.0018 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.075 | $0.018 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.068 | $0.014 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.400 | $0.092 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.015 | $0.0034 |
| Cost to run a full benchmark suite | $4.08 | $0.975 |
| Output speed | 63 tok/s | 307 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 29.3 s | 17.6 s |
| Time to a complete answer | 37.2 s | 19.2 s |
Per token is not per task: on Artificial Analysis' full suite Claude Opus 4.8 (max) cost $4.08 and Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) $0.975, because Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) used about 1.2× as many tokens for the same work.
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 4.8 (max) scores 63.3 and takes 29 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 4.8 (high) scores 60.7 in 1 s, Claude Opus 4.8 scores 60.1 in 1 s. Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) scores 63.2 and takes 18 s to its first answer token. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
135 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 63.3 | 63.2 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | 56.5 | 55.4 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 58.9 | 55.1 |
| Composite score | BenchLeader | 76.2 | 73.8 |
| Instruction following score | BenchLeader | 62.1 | – |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 66.9 | 66.7 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 63.8 | 64.5 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 68.1 | 67.3 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 68.8 | 69.3 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | – | 68.6 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | – | 65.2 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $10.00 | $2.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 63 tok/s | 307 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 29.3 s | 17.6 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 91.0% | – |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 64.8%† | 74.5%† |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1505† | 1512 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 89.2%† | 90.0%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 89.2% | 90.0% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.0% | 90.4% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 48.7% | 45.5% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 92.4%† | – |
| EnigmaEval | Scale AI SEAL | 23.5%† | – |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 92.5% | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 72.1%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 1.5%† | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 20.9% | 17.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 52.0% | 27.0% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 36.0% | – |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 57.5% | 48.4% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 94.9% | 94.7% |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 66.3% | – |
| BTF-3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 14.0%† | – |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | 53.5% | 57.4% |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 70.5%† | 60.3% |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 46.5%† | – |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | 47.1%† | – |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1529† | 1541 |
Show all 135 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.8 (max) | Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1536† | 1533 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | 77.3%† | 78.2%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 81.8% | 77.5% |
| SciCode (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 54.4% | 57.4% |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 87.8%† | – |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 21.8% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 88.6%† | 86.6% |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | 47.3%† | 29.9% |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 1.0%† | 0.5% |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 82.7%† | 79.1% |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 57.3%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Refactoring | Scale AI SEAL | 46.7%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 49.6%† | – |
| Surface Evolver Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 87.5%† | – |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 59.0% | 54.9% |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 1563.8† | – |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 12.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 21.7% | 7.1% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 84.6% | 80.2% |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | – | 70.3%† |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 23.6% | – |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | OSWorld | 20.6% | – |
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | 8.3%† | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 48.9% | 45.4%† |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | -7 |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | 48.3%† | 21.3%† |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | 96.0%† | 36.0%† |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 50.5% | 57.6% |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | 58.3% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 94.4% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | 71.9%† | 69.7% |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 82.2% | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 35.3%† | – |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 39.7% | – |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 34.2% | 34.9% |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 45.0% | – |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | – | 69.5% |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | 53.9%† | 60.6% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | 9.6%† | 25.4% |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 43.8%† | 43.8% |
| SkillsBench | Vals AI | 59.2%† | 53.0% |
| SREBench | Vals AI | – | 0.0% |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 30.0%† | 32.8% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 70.0%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 23.2%† | 6.1% |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | 4.3%† | – |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | 11.8%† | – |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | 1195† | – |
| DeepResearch Bench | DeepResearch Bench | 50.2%† | – |
| PostTrainBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 32.9% | – |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 70.9%† | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 2992.3 | – |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 45.6% | 40.6% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 22.8% | 17.4% |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | 44.0% | 47.3% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1319 | 1327 |
| FACTS Search | 79.6%† | – | |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 80.0% | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 56.1% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 98.3% | – |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 69.0% | 43.0%† |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 94.3% | 91.2% |
| AIME 2026 | MathArena | 100.0% | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | MathArena | 95.5% | – |
| MathArena Apex | MathArena | 81.3% | – |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1477† | 1491 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 53.0% | 60.3% |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 66.0%† | 76.5%† |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | 81.8%† | 67.7%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 66.0% | 76.5% |
| AA-Omniscience | Artificial Analysis | 28.8 | 27.2 |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 89.6%† | 88.3% |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 83.6%† | 85.3% |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 66.7%† | 70.9% |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 75.6%† | 80.4% |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | – | 64.8% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | 69.4%† | 57.0% |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 53.2%† | 49.4% |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 85.8%† | 90.1% |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 68.1%† | 68.5% |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 46.8% | – |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 28.6% | – |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 24.0% | 16.0% |
| AA-Omniscience: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 48.8% | 45.4% |
| AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 60.8% | 66.7% |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 79.7% | 78.6% |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 72.0% | 74.3% |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | 62.2% | – |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1478† | 1472 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1474† | 1491 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1267† | – |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1463† | 1439 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1495† | 1511 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1499† | 1488 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1289† | 1304 |
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | 78.8%† | 67.1%† |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 86.6%† | 86.1% |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 69.9%† | 65.4% |
| SAGE | Vals AI | 54.8%† | 47.7% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 14.5%† | – |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR | Artificial Analysis | 77.7% | 79.0% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1475† | – |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | 19.4% | 7.2% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 159.0† | 155.1† |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | 76.8%† | 62.4%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 76.2% | 78.0% |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 41.8 | 39.6 |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | 24.0% | – |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | 70.9%† | 69.8%† |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 18.2% | – |
Data as of 2026-10-25. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 new result (AA-Briefcase v1.1).
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh): 1 new result (AA-Briefcase v1.1).
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 new result (Vals RSI Index).
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh): 1 new result (Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1).
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 score revision.
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh): 2 score revisions.
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 new result (ForecastBench).
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max): BenchLeader Index 62.5 → 63.4.
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh): BenchLeader Index 62.6 → 63.3.
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 5 new results (AutomationBench, GDP.pdf (AA), MLCR…).
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Opus 4.8 vs Muse Wonder Full
- Muse Spark 1.2 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Muse Spark 1.2 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Muse Spark 1.2 vs Muse Wonder Full
- Muse Spark 1.2 vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Claude Opus 4.7 vs Muse Spark 1.2
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Muse Spark 1.2: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Muse Spark 1.2?
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (63.3 vs 63.2, within the ±6.6 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 2026-10-25, so check the category scores for your use.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Muse Spark 1.2, and will that change?
- Muse Spark 1.2 is cheaper today: $2.00 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Muse Spark 1.2 for coding?
- Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in coding (59 vs 55 on the category index, where 50 is average). On SciCode, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 53.5% for Claude Opus 4.8 against 57.4% for Muse Spark 1.2.
- Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Muse Spark 1.2 for agents and tool use?
- Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in agentic tasks (57 vs 55 on the category index, where 50 is average). On τ³-Banking (AA), the top shared agents & tools benchmark, it is 34.2% for Claude Opus 4.8 against 34.9% for Muse Spark 1.2.
- Which is better for long documents?
- They are level on long-context benchmarks (64 vs 65). Both take about 1M tokens: Claude Opus 4.8 1,000,000, Muse Spark 1.2 1,048,576.
- Which has lower latency?
- Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) answers first: 17.6 s against 29.3 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.8 or Muse Spark 1.2?
- Muse Spark 1.2 streams faster: 307 against 63 output tokens per second.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Opus 4.8 vs Muse Spark 1.2?
- Across the 31 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.8 leads 18, Muse Spark 1.2 leads 13. Independent sources split: Claude Opus 4.8 leads on AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2; Muse Spark 1.2 leads on Arena Text.
- When was Muse Spark 1.2 released?
- Muse Spark 1.2 was released on 5 Aug 2026.