Muse Spark 1.3 vs DeepSeek Flash (4.1)
Muse Spark 1.3 and DeepSeek Flash (4.1) are within three points on the Models at Work leaderboard, which we treat as a tie (72 vs 70). DeepSeek Flash (4.1) is about 1.5× cheaper per blended million tokens ($0.52 vs $0.78, one figure an Artificial Analysis estimate).
| Muse Spark 1.3 · Meta | DeepSeek Flash (4.1) · DeepSeek | |
|---|---|---|
| Leaderboard rank | #8 | #9 |
| Score (0–100) | 72 | 70 |
| Tier | Workhorse | Fast and cheap |
| Price per 1M tokens | $0.78 blended (estimate) | $0.30 in · $1.20 out |
| Context window | Not verified | 1M |
| Open weights | Not verified | Not verified |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index | 48 | — |
| Arena text score | 1494 | — |
| DistressBench (Scale) | 84.88 | — |
| Best for | Latency-first products, Customer-facing chat, Meta-ecosystem teams | Cheap coding tiers, Bulk generation, Experiments where data residency is not a constraint |
Choose Muse Spark 1.3 if…
- you need latency-first products
- you need customer-facing chat
- you need meta-ecosystem teams
The fastest thing in the table by a distance, and the one to beat on the stress benchmark nobody else talks about.
Choose DeepSeek Flash (4.1) if…
- you need cheap coding tiers
- you need bulk generation
- you need experiments where data residency is not a constraint
The reason a thousand people argued on Hacker News this week: frontier-adjacent coding for pocket change, with the caveats you would expect.
Caveats: Open-weights status and licence not verified from a primary source at time of writing. Off-peak and peak pricing differ; the cheap numbers are off-peak. Data handling terms should be read before any enterprise use.
What practitioners say
DeepSeek Flash (4.1): The 'why isn't the industry freaking out' post hit 1,067 points; the most-upvoted replies say the price is real and the coding gap to Opus is also real.
Questions people ask
Which is better, Muse Spark 1.3 or DeepSeek Flash (4.1)?
Muse Spark 1.3 and DeepSeek Flash (4.1) are within three points on the Models at Work leaderboard, which we treat as a tie (72 vs 70). DeepSeek Flash (4.1) is about 1.5× cheaper per blended million tokens ($0.52 vs $0.78, one figure an Artificial Analysis estimate).
When should I choose Muse Spark 1.3 over DeepSeek Flash (4.1)?
Choose Muse Spark 1.3 for latency-first products, customer-facing chat, meta-ecosystem teams. The fastest thing in the table by a distance, and the one to beat on the stress benchmark nobody else talks about.
When should I choose DeepSeek Flash (4.1) over Muse Spark 1.3?
Choose DeepSeek Flash (4.1) for cheap coding tiers, bulk generation, experiments where data residency is not a constraint. The reason a thousand people argued on Hacker News this week: frontier-adjacent coding for pocket change, with the caveats you would expect.
Which is cheaper, Muse Spark 1.3 or DeepSeek Flash (4.1)?
Meta does not publish a simple list price for Muse Spark 1.3; Artificial Analysis estimates a blended $0.78 per million tokens (three input to one output). DeepSeek Flash (4.1) costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens on DeepSeek's list price (DeepSeek API pricing, read Oct 10, 2026).
Scores come from the Models at Work leaderboard: Score is 0 to 100: 50% independent evals normalised within this table, 20% price-performance, 15% practitioner sentiment from Signals and community threads, 15% operational fit (context, speed, availability, open weights). Models within three points are a tie in practice. Vendor-published figures are labelled as such and never counted as independent. Prices are vendor list prices where published; blended figures assume three input tokens per output token.