GLM-4.6 vs GPT-4o
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Z.ai (Zhipu) · Sep 2025
The budget coding-agent favorite of late 2025 — near-Sonnet coding utility with MIT weights and a $3/month plan.
OpenAI · May 2024
The 2024 omni-modal classic with native audio in and out; superseded at the frontier but still everywhere in production.
The verdict
GLM-4.6 wins 2 of the 2 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for GPT-4o. On price the gap is dramatic: GLM-4.6 works out roughly 4.4x cheaper per blended million tokens. GLM-4.6 also takes 200K of context versus 128K for GPT-4o. And GLM-4.6 is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Benchmark head-to-head 2–0
Specs & pricing
| GLM-4.6 | GPT-4o | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | 63.9 | — |
| Input price / 1M | $0.6 | $2.5 |
| Output price / 1M | $2.2 | $10 |
| Context window | 200K | 128K |
| Max output | 128K | 16K |
| Open weights | yes (MIT) | no |
| Reasoning model | yes | no |
| Multimodal input | text | text, image, audio |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jul 2025 | Oct 2023 |
| Released | Sep 2025 | May 2024 |
| Example monthly cost* | $9.30 | $40.00 |
* 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 GPT-4o?
- GLM-4.6 wins 2 of the 2 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for GPT-4o. On price the gap is dramatic: GLM-4.6 works out roughly 4.4x cheaper per blended million tokens. GLM-4.6 also takes 200K of context versus 128K for GPT-4o. And GLM-4.6 is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, GLM-4.6 or GPT-4o?
- GLM-4.6 costs $0.6/$2.2 per million input/output tokens, while GPT-4o costs $2.5/$10. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $9.30 versus $40.00.
- Which model is better for coding, GLM-4.6 or GPT-4o?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — GLM-4.6 scores 68% versus 33.2% for GPT-4o, making GLM-4.6 the stronger pick for coding agents.