Claude Fable 5 is the strongest alternative to Muse Glimmer 30B — it scores 100 vs 80 on coding at $10/1M input (Muse Glimmer 30B costs $0.35/1M). GPT-5.6 Luna is the budget swap: $0.2/1M input is 43% cheaper. Kimi K3 is the top open-weight option if you want a model you can self-host.
The shortest way to see the safest default, the lower-cost option, and the specialist pick before you read deeper.
Claude Fable 5 is the safest overall answer here when you want the strongest default instead of the lowest list price.
Mistral: Mistral Nemo is the lower-cost option to start with when you still need useful output at scale.
Muse Glimmer 30B is the better pick when response speed matters more than maximum reasoning depth.
Claude Fable 5 beats Muse Glimmer 30B on coding (100 vs 80) at $10/1M input tokens.
GPT-5.6 Luna cuts input cost by 43% ($0.2 vs $0.35/1M) while scoring 88/100 on coding.
Kimi K3 is open-weight — self-host it or run it via low-cost API providers at $3/1M input.
Choose Claude Fable 5 when you want the closest overall replacement — it targets the hardest coding tasks, autonomous multi-step agents, and frontier-grade reasoning.
Choose GPT-5.6 Luna when token volume matters more than peak quality — it is 43% cheaper on input.
Staying with Meta? Muse Spark is the strongest in-house switch at $1.25/1M input.
Switch the scoring lens to see whether the top answer changes when you care more about cost, speed, or long-document work.
Anthropic / Premium / Jun 9, 2026
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Ranks models by the broadest mix of coding, writing, research, and long-context usefulness.
You are latency- or cost-sensitive, or your tasks don't need frontier-level reasoning — Opus 4.8 at half the price is plenty.
The fastest way to see where the recommendation shifts when your priority changes.
Apache 2.0 agent model that runs on a 24GB GPU.
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Best budget model from a frontier lab — near-frontier scores at commodity price.
Closest Chinese challenger to the frontier — #4 overall on intelligence.
Best-value multimodal agentic model — GPT-5.5-tier smarts, video/audio/PDF in.
The frontier ceiling — same model as Fable 5, safeguards lifted, partner-only.
Every figure below is the provider's list price or a published capability score — the same numbers the recommendation on this page is built from.
| Model | Input | Output | Est. month | Context | Speed | Coding | Writing | Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5Anthropic | $10.00/1M | $50.00/1M | $200 | 1M tokens | Deliberate | 100 | 98 | 100 |
| Muse Glimmer 30BMeta | $0.35/1M | $1.50/1M | $6.50 | 131k tokens | Fast | 80 | 74 | 76 |
| GPT-5.6 LunaOpenAI | $0.20/1M | $1.20/1M | $4.40 | 1.1M tokens | Fast | 88 | 85 | 84 |
| Kimi K3Moonshot | $3.00/1M | $15.00/1M | $60 | 1M tokens | Deliberate | 96 | 90 | 93 |
Capability scores are out of 100 and reflect our own weighting of published benchmarks and production signals — see how we evaluate models. “Est. month” assumes 10M input and 2M output tokens at list price, with no batch or caching discounts applied, so treat it as a ceiling.
What each one is genuinely good at, where it falls down, and the situations we would steer you away from it — not just the headline score.
Anthropic's new Mythos-class flagship and the most capable coding model anyone can use — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, an 11-point jump over Opus 4.8. 1M context, 128K output, native parallel subagents. Released June 9, 2026.
You are latency- or cost-sensitive, or your tasks don't need frontier-level reasoning — Opus 4.8 at half the price is plenty.
The strongest coding and reasoning model you can actually use today. 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro is an 11-point leap over Opus 4.8 — the biggest single-release jump of 2026. It costs 2× Opus 4.8, so use it for the hardest agentic and engineering work and keep Opus 4.8 or Sonnet for everyday volume.
Launched June 9, 2026 as the public, Mythos-class release. Available on the Claude API, Microsoft Foundry, and Google Vertex AI. Free for all users until June 22, 2026. Same underlying model as Claude Mythos 5, with safeguards that block specific high-risk cyber responses.
Meta's return to genuine open source — a 30B dense model under Apache 2.0, built for always-on agents rather than chat, and the first release from Meta Superintelligence Labs.
You need a large context window or the strongest agent scores at this size — check Qwen's 27B first.
The best Apache 2.0 agent model you can run on consumer hardware right now. Pick it when licence freedom and local execution matter more than the last few benchmark points — otherwise Qwen3.6-27B edges it on agent tasks.
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.
The small, fast, cheap tier of the GPT-5.6 family — near-frontier scores on many benchmarks at commodity pricing after its ~80% July price cut.
Your workload actually uses the long context window — recall drops to 41% past 512K tokens.
The budget disruptor of 2026. After the price cut, Luna delivers benchmark scores that embarrass models 10x its price. Just don't trust it with genuinely long context — recall collapses past 512K tokens.
Fully public July 9, 2026; price cut ~80% to $0.20/$1.20 on July 30, 2026 (launched at $1/$6). Many third-party pages still show the old price.
Moonshot's 2.8-trillion-parameter multimodal reasoning flagship with always-on thinking — the largest open-weight model ever released and the closest Chinese challenger to the Western frontier.
You need fast responses or predictable output costs — always-on thinking burns tokens.
The first Chinese model to genuinely crowd the Western frontier — #4 on aggregate intelligence ahead of Opus 4.8. The always-on thinking makes it slow and output-heavy, so cost per task runs above the sticker price. A serious Opus-class alternative if latency isn't critical.
Released July 16, 2026; open weights July 26. Cache-hit input $0.30/1M. Subscriptions: Adagio (free) to Vivace $199/mo; full 1M context only on Allegro ($99) and up. New signups paused July 19 near GPU capacity, reopening in batches.
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Claude Fable 5 is the strongest overall alternative. It scores 100/100 on coding (Muse Glimmer 30B: 80/100) and costs $10/1M input vs $0.35/1M. New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
GPT-5.6 Luna at $0.2/1M input — 43% cheaper than Muse Glimmer 30B's $0.35/1M. It scores 88/100 on coding, so expect a quality step down on the hardest tasks.
Yes — Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight replacement for Muse Glimmer 30B, scoring 96/100 on coding against Muse Glimmer 30B's 80/100. You can self-host it or run it through hosted APIs at $3/1M input (Muse Glimmer 30B costs $0.35/1M), with no per-seat subscription. Self-hosting trades the licence saving for infrastructure you have to run, so it pays off at sustained volume rather than for occasional use.
Muse Spark — same provider, same API surface, $1.25/1M input vs $0.35/1M. Best-value multimodal agentic model — GPT-5.5-tier smarts, video/audio/PDF in.
The best Apache 2.0 agent model you can run on consumer hardware right now.