Muse Spark 1.3 (Max) and Qwen3.8 Max (0902) are close rivals from Meta and Alibaba. The biggest gap is output speed, where Muse Spark 1.3 Max records 140 tokens per second and Qwen3.8 Max 0902 38 tokens per second. No hands-on testing went into this write-up; it summarises the recorded benchmark, price and speed data for both models.
Speed and latency
Measured output speed is 140 tokens per second for Muse Spark 1.3 Max and 38 tokens per second for Qwen3.8 Max 0902. That makes Muse Spark 1.3 Max roughly 3.7 times as fast at writing. The wait for the first token averages 36 seconds on Muse Spark 1.3 Max against 3.2 seconds on Qwen3.8 Max 0902. So the two pull in opposite directions, with Qwen3.8 Max 0902 quicker off the mark and Muse Spark 1.3 Max quicker once it gets going; the crossover is around 1,700 tokens. Waits that long are felt on every chat-style request, though they matter less for batch jobs.
For a 2,000-token response, first token plus generation comes to roughly 50 seconds on Muse Spark 1.3 Max and 56 seconds on Qwen3.8 Max 0902.
Overall capability: 2.9 points apart
Muse Spark 1.3 Max comes out ahead on the intelligence index, 36.6 to 33.7. It is a small margin for an index that averages many evaluations. In relative terms, Muse Spark 1.3 Max scores 9% higher.
For context, that places Muse Spark 1.3 Max 36th and Qwen3.8 Max 0902 44th out of 109 scored models still on offer.
For coding or maths work specifically, the catalogue has no dedicated index on either side yet.
What they cost
Muse Spark 1.3 Max lists $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens; Qwen3.8 Max 0902 lists $2.00 and $6.00. That makes Muse Spark 1.3 Max's output 29% cheaper.
A reference job of 1 million input tokens and 200,000 output tokens costs $2.10 with Muse Spark 1.3 Max and $3.20 with Qwen3.8 Max 0902, so Muse Spark 1.3 Max saves $1.10. For classifying 100,000 short messages at 150 input tokens and 5 output tokens each, Muse Spark 1.3 Max would come in 37% lower: $20.88 for Muse Spark 1.3 Max against $33.00 for Qwen3.8 Max 0902.
Score per dollar
A blunt value measure, blended price over intelligence score, puts Muse Spark 1.3 Max at $0.055 and Qwen3.8 Max 0902 at $0.089 per point. With the higher score and the lower cost per point, Muse Spark 1.3 Max is the better value per point on these numbers.
When they came out
Both were released on September 2, 2026.

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