# GroqCloud vs Muse Spark Open

> GroqCloud scores 75.6 (BB) to Muse Spark Open's 53.4 (D) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-15

GroqCloud scores 75.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Muse Spark Open's 53.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Muse Spark Open leads on payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

- GroqCloud: grade BB, 75.6/100, rank #47 of 1095. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/groq.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/groq.json
- Muse Spark Open: grade D, 53.4/100, rank #760 of 1095. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/muse-spark-open.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/muse-spark-open.json
- Best model APIs and inference for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/inference/index.md
- All 210 models comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inference/index.md

## Which one, for what

### GroqCloud (BB)

Good for: Many small, latency-sensitive calls on open-weight models, routing, extraction and classification, and agents that need to start free.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 100 against 42
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 69
- Security & auth, 77 against 44
- Maintenance & community, 72 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 85 against 53

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: Four model shutdown dates between 2026-07-17 and 2026-09-21, with no stated minimum notice

### Muse Spark Open (D)

Good for: A team with a four-GPU Blackwell node, or two to four Mac Studios, that wants a 1M-token multimodal coding and agent model on its own hardware with no prompts leaving it.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 40

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it

Watch for: The NVFP4 checkpoint (about 537 GB) serves on four B300 GPUs and the BF16 one (about 1.65 TB) on eight


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | GroqCloud | Muse Spark Open | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 100 | 42 | GroqCloud +58 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 64 | 61 | GroqCloud +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 69 | GroqCloud +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 77 | 44 | GroqCloud +33 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 50 | Muse Spark Open +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 60 | GroqCloud +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 53 | GroqCloud +32 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.6 · BB** | **53.4 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | GroqCloud | Muse Spark Open |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Groq | Meta |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.groq.com/openai/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | Muse Model Licence (source-available weights, not an OSI licence), free of charge with an attribution notice, a separate agreement with Meta before Model as a Service by a licensee group above $20M gross revenue, and the Muse Spark Open Usage Policy |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-21 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-22 |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-11-12 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 619 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | none |

## Verdicts

**GroqCloud.** Free plan with no card, at 30 requests a minute and 1,000 a day on gpt-oss. Four model shutdown dates between 2026-07-17 and 2026-09-21, with no stated minimum notice.

**Muse Spark Open.** Muse Spark Open runs on the owner's hardware in seven runtimes, with OpenAI-compatible servers in vLLM and SGLang, standard tool calls, a 1M-token context and Meta's own serving docs. Serving the 537 GB NVFP4 checkpoint takes four B300 GPUs, Meta's download is gated by manual review, and the licence adds attribution and a revenue threshold for model resellers.

## Before you call either

### GroqCloud

1. Call `/models` at start-up. Four model ids stopped working this quarter
2. Read `retry-after` on a 429 and the `x-ratelimit-remaining-tokens` header before the next call
3. Free plan allows 8,000 tokens a minute on gpt-oss, so keep prompts small or batch them
4. Don't build on Qwen 3.8 27B. It's a preview and previews can go at short notice
5. Treat a 498 as Flex capacity and retry later; 5xx responses aren't billed

### Muse Spark Open

1. Start vLLM or SGLang with `--reasoning-parser muse --tool-call-parser muse` (vLLM also `--enable-auto-tool-choice`), or tool calls come back as raw text
2. Set `reasoning_effort` to `low` or `medium` for short tasks. The default is `xhigh`, reasoning can't be turned off, and other values return an error
3. Stop only on `<|eot|>` and end of text. Stopping on `<|eom|>` cuts off tool calls and final answers
4. Stream long generations and leave `max_tokens` room for reasoning, or `content` can come back empty with `finish_reason` `length`
5. Don't call Meta Model API for this model. Use a self-hosted server or a hosted provider's model string, such as `meta-models/muse-spark-open`

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, GroqCloud or Muse Spark Open?

GroqCloud scores 75.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Muse Spark Open's 53.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Muse Spark Open leads on payments & pricing.

### Do GroqCloud and Muse Spark Open need an API key?

GroqCloud needs an API key. Muse Spark Open needs no key.

### Can an agent call GroqCloud and Muse Spark Open without installing anything?

GroqCloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.groq.com/openai/v1. No hosted endpoint is listed for Muse Spark Open.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/groq-vs-muse-spark-open.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/groq-vs-muse-spark-open.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "groq", "b": "muse-spark-open"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare groq muse-spark-open`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/groq.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/muse-spark-open.json

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