# Muse Spark Open vs SambaCloud

> SambaCloud scores 66.4 (B) to Muse Spark Open's 53.4 (D) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/muse-spark-open-vs-sambanova
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
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- Updated: 2026-10-15

SambaCloud scores 66.4 (B) on agent readiness against Muse Spark Open's 53.4 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Muse Spark Open leads on payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

- 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
- SambaCloud: grade B, 66.4/100, rank #313 of 1095. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sambanova.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sambanova.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

### 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

### SambaCloud (B)

Good for: Agents that want open-weight models behind an OpenAI or Anthropic client with a free start and prices an agent can read from the API.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 85 against 42
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 61
- Security & auth, 58 against 44
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 63 against 53

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: Production models get a notice of two to three weeks, and 13 model ids were removed between 9 March and 9 June 2026


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Muse Spark Open | SambaCloud | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 42 | 85 | SambaCloud +43 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 81 | SambaCloud +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 67 | Muse Spark Open +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 44 | 58 | SambaCloud +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 40 | Muse Spark Open +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 77 | SambaCloud +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 53 | 63 | SambaCloud +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **53.4 · D** | **66.4 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Muse Spark Open | SambaCloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Meta | SambaNova Systems, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.sambanova.ai/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | 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 | Proprietary service under the SambaCloud Terms of Service. The SDKs and the OpenAPI document are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-09-17 |
| Terms last updated |  | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2023-05-27 |
| 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 | none | 2 stars, 76 npm/wk, 6.1k PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**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.

**SambaCloud.** Per-token prices and the model list are readable without a key at `/v1/models`, and a free tier needs no card. Production models get two to three weeks' notice before removal, 13 model ids left between March and June 2026, and the docs disagree with the live catalogue on MiniMax-M2.7.

## Before you call either

### 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`

### SambaCloud

1. Call `GET https://api.sambanova.ai/v1/models` at start-up and use only ids it returns. The docs name models the endpoint no longer lists
2. Read `x-ratelimit-remaining-requests` and `x-ratelimit-remaining-requests-day` on every response. The free tier allows 20 requests a day per model
3. Treat 429 `queue_full` and 503 `maintenance` as retryable after a delay, and 410 `model_deprecated` as a signal to change model
4. Validate JSON output yourself. Schema enforcement is best effort and `strict: true` changes nothing
5. Check `max_completion_tokens` per model. DeepSeek-V3.1 caps output at 7,168 tokens and Llama 3.3 70B at 3,072

## Questions

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

SambaCloud scores 66.4 (B) on agent readiness against Muse Spark Open's 53.4 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Muse Spark Open leads on payments & pricing.

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

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

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

No hosted endpoint is listed for Muse Spark Open. SambaCloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.sambanova.ai/v1.


## For agents

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

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- [Claude API vs SambaCloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anthropic-api-vs-sambanova.md)
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- [Antseed vs SambaCloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antseed-vs-sambanova.md)
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- [Meta Model API vs SambaCloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meta-model-api-vs-sambanova.md)
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