Meta is entering the coding wars with a new agent aimed at taking on Anthropic and OpenAI.
The company announced Wednesday a beta version of Muse Code — powered by its Muse Spark 1.2 AI model — that Meta said can handle complex software engineering tasks, such as writing code and validating results.
Muse Code is Meta’s answer to tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, which have become increasingly popular among developers.
Meta’s AI chief Alexandr Wang said in an X post that Muse Code is “one of the most affordable coding agents on the market, available globally.”
The standard version of Muse Spark 1.2 costs $1.25 per million input tokens, 15 cents per million cached-input tokens, and $4.25 per million output tokens. Tokens are small pieces of text or code that AI models process.
A heavily discounted “contributor” tier comes with a stipulation that user activity will be used to improve Meta’s products. That could appeal to individual developers and startups, while companies working with proprietary code may prefer the standard tier.
Direct comparisons can be difficult since Claude Code and Codex are bundled into subscriptions. Anthropic’s Pro Plan, which is $20 a month, includes Claude Code, while Max plans cost $100 to $200 a month. OpenAI’s Codex is available through a ChatGPT Plus plan that costs $20 a month. OpenAI’s Pro plan costs $100 a month.
The launch reflects how software coding has become a critical part of the AI battleground. Unlike a standard chatbot, a coding agent can examine a company’s software, run tests, and write code with limited supervision.
Anthropic gained early traction with Claude Code, while OpenAI expanded Codex across ChatGPT and developer terminals.
During Meta’s first-quarter earnings call in April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that developer tools weren’t the company’s primary focus, though he added that he was not opposed to offering coding tools.
With Muse Code, Meta seems to be hoping to attract the same programmers who might use Claude or Codex by offering a comparable agent at a lower price.
Read the full article here
