GLM-4.6 vs GLM-5
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
GLM-4.6
63.9Z.ai (Zhipu) · Sep 2025
The budget coding-agent favorite of late 2025 — near-Sonnet coding utility with MIT weights and a $3/month plan.
GLM-5
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
GLM-5 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for GLM-4.6. GLM-4.6 is about 1.6x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix).
Benchmark head-to-head 0–1
Specs & pricing
| GLM-4.6 | GLM-5 | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | 63.9 | — |
| Input price / 1M | $0.6 | $1 |
| Output price / 1M | $2.2 | $3.2 |
| Context window | 200K | 200K |
| Max output | 128K | 128K |
| Open weights | yes (MIT) | yes (MIT) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jul 2025 | Dec 2025 |
| Released | Sep 2025 | Feb 2026 |
| Example monthly cost* | $9.30 | $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, GLM-4.6 or GLM-5?
- GLM-5 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for GLM-4.6. GLM-4.6 is about 1.6x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix).
- Which is cheaper, GLM-4.6 or GLM-5?
- GLM-4.6 costs $0.6/$2.2 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 $9.30 versus $14.80.
- Which model is better for coding, GLM-4.6 or GLM-5?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — GLM-5 scores ~77.8% versus 68% for GLM-4.6, making GLM-5 the stronger pick for coding agents.