Local and self-hosted agents that run continuously
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You need a large context window or the strongest agent scores at this size — check Qwen's 27B first.
Pricing
$0.35/1M in
$1.50/1M out
Context
131k tokens
Speed
Fast
Released August 9, 2026 — the first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs and Meta's return to a genuinely permissive licence. No Meta API price; hosted rates from third parties such as Together and OpenRouter land around $0.35/$1.50. Local hardware targets: 24GB for K-Quant-17GB, 32GB for K-Quant-Dynamic, 64GB for full precision.
Llama 3 8B Instruct is Meta's compact open-weight instruction-following model, optimized for efficiency and accessibility at extremely low cost. It handles everyday text tasks like summarization, Q&A, and light coding at a fraction of the price of frontier models.
Verdict
A dirt-cheap, fast open model for simple tasks — just don't expect frontier-level quality.
Quality score
39%
Pricing
$0.14/1M in
$0.14/1M out
Speed
Very fast
5/5 speed
Context
8k tokens
As an open-weight model, Llama 3 8B can be self-hosted via platforms like Ollama, Replicate, or Together AI. The 8,192 token context window is a significant practical limitation. Pricing listed reflects hosted API inference; self-hosted costs vary.
Open-weightBudgetFastSelf-hostableCompact
Best for
High-volume, cost-sensitive applications where speed and price matter more than peak accuracy.
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is Meta's smallest production-ready open-weight model, optimized for fast, low-cost inference on everyday language tasks. It delivers surprisingly capable instruction-following for its size, making it a go-to for high-volume, cost-sensitive deployments.
Verdict
The right tool for cheap, fast, high-volume tasks — not for anything that requires serious thinking.
Quality score
43%
Pricing
$0.05/1M in
$0.08/1M out
Speed
Very fast
5/5 speed
Context
16k tokens
Being open-weight, this model can be run locally or self-hosted via providers like Together AI, Fireworks, or Groq, often at even lower costs. The 16K context window is a meaningful limitation compared to other models in this price tier.
Open WeightBudgetFastSelf-HostableMeta
Best for
High-throughput applications where cost and speed matter more than frontier-level quality, such as chatbots, content classification, and text summarization.
Meta Superintelligence Labs' first closed frontier model — a natively multimodal agentic reasoner (text, image, video, audio, PDF in) with a parallel-agent 'Contemplating mode', priced aggressively below rivals.
Verdict
Best-value multimodal agentic model — GPT-5.5-tier smarts, video/audio/PDF in.
Quality score
89%
Pricing
$1.25/1M in
$4.25/1M out
Speed
Balanced
3/5 speed
Context
1.0M tokens
v1.0 launched April 8, 2026 alongside Llama 5; v1.1 (July 9) opened the paid API; v1.2 (Aug 5) is coding-focused and powers Muse Code. Built with 'over an order of magnitude less' pretraining compute than Llama 4 Maverick. Cache hits $0.15/1M.
MultimodalAgenticValue1M context
Best for
Agentic tool-use and multimodal reasoning at aggressive pricing
Muse Glimmer 30B is best for local and self-hosted agents that run continuously. It is a strong fit when that workflow matters more than the tradeoffs around budget pricing and fast speed.
When should I avoid Muse Glimmer 30B?
You need a large context window or the strongest agent scores at this size — check Qwen's 27B first.
What is a cheaper alternative to Muse Glimmer 30B?
Mistral: Mistral Nemo is the lower-cost option to compare first when you want a similar workflow fit with less token spend.
What is a faster alternative to Muse Glimmer 30B?
Meta: Llama 3 8B Instruct is the better pick when response time matters more than maximum depth or premium quality.
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