Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GLM-5
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Anthropic · Apr 2026
Anthropic's mid-tier workhorse: near-Opus capability at $3/$15, and the leader on the Finance Agent benchmark.
Z.ai (Zhipu) · Feb 2026
Z.ai's 744B open-weights MoE — within ~4 points of Opus 4.6 on SWE-bench Verified at $1/$3.20 per million tokens.
The verdict
Claude Sonnet 4.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for GLM-5. On price the gap is dramatic: GLM-5 works out roughly 3.9x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.6 also takes 1M of context versus 200K for GLM-5. And GLM-5 is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Benchmark head-to-head 1–0
Specs & pricing
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GLM-5 | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | — |
| Input price / 1M | $3 | $1 |
| Output price / 1M | $15 | $3.2 |
| Context window | 1M | 200K |
| Max output | 64K | 128K |
| Open weights | no | yes (MIT) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jan 2026 | Dec 2025 |
| Released | Apr 2026 | Feb 2026 |
| Example monthly cost* | $52.50 | $14.80 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GLM-5?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for GLM-5. On price the gap is dramatic: GLM-5 works out roughly 3.9x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.6 also takes 1M of context versus 200K for GLM-5. And GLM-5 is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GLM-5?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3/$15 per million input/output tokens, while GLM-5 costs $1/$3.2. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $52.50 versus $14.80.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GLM-5?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores ~79.6% versus ~77.8% for GLM-5, making Claude Sonnet 4.6 the stronger pick for coding agents.