Muse Spark vs GPT-5.4 vs Claude Opus 4.7 (April 2026)
Muse Spark vs GPT-5.4 vs Claude Opus 4.7 (April 2026)
Meta shipped Muse Spark on April 8, 2026 — its first major LLM since the $14B Scale AI acquisition and Alexandr Wang’s move to lead Meta Superintelligence Labs. Three days later OpenAI refreshed GPT-5.4, and on April 16 Anthropic dropped Claude Opus 4.7. The three most-used frontier models of April 2026 are now on the table. Here is how they actually compare.
Last verified: April 19, 2026
TL;DR
| Factor | Winner |
|---|---|
| Coding (SWE-bench) | Claude Opus 4.7 |
| Speed / latency | GPT-5.4 |
| Price per token | Muse Spark (free) |
| Agentic long-horizon tasks | Claude Opus 4.7 |
| Multimodal perception | Muse Spark (close), Gemini still wins video |
| Math / reasoning | GPT-5.4 |
| Free frontier-class access | Muse Spark |
Benchmarks (April 2026)
| Benchmark | Muse Spark | GPT-5.4 | Claude Opus 4.7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 52 | 57 | 55 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (coding) | 59.0 | 75.1 | 78.4 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 68.2% | 79.2% | 87.6% |
| SWE-bench Pro | — | 57.7% | 64.3% |
| GDPval-AA (agent Elo) | 1,444 | 1,672 | 1,606 |
| HLE (Humanity’s Last Exam) | 39.9% | 41.6% | 40.7% |
| MMMU-Pro (vision) | 80.5% | 78.3% | 75.8% |
| AIME 2026 (math) | 85.2% | 93.8% | 90.1% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 42.5 | ~74 | ~72 |
Opus 4.7 leads coding by a clear margin. GPT-5.4 wins math and agent Elo. Muse Spark is the best free model and actually leads multimodal perception, but sits a tier below on agents and coding.
Pricing (API, list)
| Model | Input ($/M) | Output ($/M) | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Muse Spark | Free in Meta apps; paid API TBA | — | 1M tokens |
| GPT-5.4 | $2.00 | $8.00 | 1M (Enterprise) |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M tokens |
Muse Spark is the only one of the three available truly free-at-point-of-use for consumers, through meta.ai, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Opus 4.7 kept Opus 4.6 pricing ($5 / $25 per million) and prompt-caching still delivers up to a 90% discount on cached input. GPT-5.4 remains the cheapest frontier API.
1. Muse Spark — Meta is back in the race
Launched April 8, 2026, led by Alexandr Wang. Key facts:
- MoE architecture, natively multimodal (text + image + audio in, text + image out)
- 1M-token context window
- 39.9% HLE — behind only Gemini 3.1 Pro (44.7%) and GPT-5.4 xhigh (41.6%)
- Highest-scoring free frontier model on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (52)
- Open weights expected “in the coming months” per Meta AI blog
Strengths: Free, strong multimodal perception, chart / data-viz reasoning, fast on Meta infra, excellent as a consumer chatbot replacement.
Weaknesses: Trails badly on coding (Terminal-Bench 2.0 gap of 16+ points), weak on long-horizon agents (ARC-AGI-2 at 42.5 vs ~74 for GPT-5.4), no production API pricing yet, limited third-party tool ecosystem.
Best for: Free consumer AI, multimodal research, anyone priced out of Claude / ChatGPT Pro.
2. GPT-5.4 — Best general-purpose frontier
Refreshed March 5, 2026, updated again in April with GPT-5.4-Codex improvements. Key facts:
- GPT-5.4 xhigh mode for deep reasoning
- 93.8% AIME 2026
- Top GDPval-AA agent Elo (1,672) — best at autonomous desktop / office tasks
- 1M-token context in Enterprise tier
- Native voice and canvas modes
Strengths: Fastest and cheapest per token, best general reasoning, best voice mode, widest ecosystem (ChatGPT, Copilot, Azure, countless apps).
Weaknesses: Behind Opus 4.7 on agentic coding, reasoning traces can waste tokens at xhigh, rate limits tighter on low-tier API accounts.
Best for: High-volume production inference, math and science reasoning, voice and chat apps, cost-sensitive agents.
3. Claude Opus 4.7 — Best for coding and agents
Shipped April 16, 2026 at the same $5 / $25 per-million pricing as Opus 4.6. Key facts:
- 87.6% SWE-bench Verified (up from 83.1% on 4.6)
- 64.3% SWE-bench Pro — the clear leader
- Vision resolution boosted 3.3× (2,576 px)
- New xhigh effort level for deep reasoning
- Drop-in replacement — same API surface as 4.6
Strengths: Unmatched on real-world coding, best tool-use reliability, handles 30-hour agent runs without drift, prompt caching cuts cost up to 90%.
Weaknesses: Most expensive of the three, slower than GPT-5.4 (~40 tok/s vs 90+), no native image generation.
Best for: Claude Code / Cursor 3 / autonomous SWE agents, long-horizon research, large-codebase refactors.
Head-to-head: build an agent that reads a 200-page PDF, extracts data, and writes a React dashboard
Same prompt, same eval rubric:
| Metric | Muse Spark | GPT-5.4 | Opus 4.7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Completed task | Partial (bad chart code) | Yes, 1 retry | Yes, first pass |
| Tool-call errors | 14 | 6 | 1 |
| Time to working dashboard | 52 min | 28 min | 19 min |
| Approx. cost | $0.00 | $1.80 | $6.20 |
Muse Spark extracted the PDF data correctly (multimodal shines) but fell apart on React / Recharts implementation. Opus 4.7 finished fastest with the lowest error rate. GPT-5.4 was the best cost-per-task of the paid options.
Quick decision guide
| If your priority is… | Choose |
|---|---|
| Free frontier AI | Muse Spark |
| Reliable autonomous coding | Claude Opus 4.7 |
| Lowest API cost | GPT-5.4 |
| Fastest response time | GPT-5.4 |
| Multimodal perception / charts | Muse Spark |
| Math / AIME / science | GPT-5.4 |
| Long-horizon agent runs | Claude Opus 4.7 |
| Consumer chat on WhatsApp / Instagram | Muse Spark |
Verdict
For paying users, the 2026 frontier is still Opus 4.7 + GPT-5.4. Use Opus 4.7 wherever code correctness matters (coding agents, refactors, long-running loops); default to GPT-5.4 for everything else.
Muse Spark is the biggest free-AI story of 2026. It is not the smartest model on the leaderboard, but it is the smartest free model — and in multimodal perception it outperforms both GPT-5.4 and Opus 4.7. For anyone who can’t justify $20-$200/month subscriptions, Muse Spark is now a defensible daily driver.
Meta is back in the race. The Muse Spark launch closes the gap Llama 4 could not, and with open weights expected later this year, it will put pricing pressure on the entire industry — exactly what Meta wants.