GLM-5 vs Qwen3-Max
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
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.
Alibaba (Qwen) · Sep 2025
Alibaba's trillion-parameter API flagship — frontier-adjacent quality with strong agentic tool use at mid-tier prices.
The verdict
GLM-5 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Qwen3-Max. GLM-5 is about 1.5x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). Qwen3-Max also takes 262K 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
| GLM-5 | Qwen3-Max | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | 80.5 |
| Input price / 1M | $1 | $1.2 |
| Output price / 1M | $3.2 | $6 |
| Context window | 200K | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Open weights | yes (MIT) | no |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Dec 2025 | Jun 2025 |
| Released | Feb 2026 | Sep 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $14.80 | $21.00 |
* 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-5 or Qwen3-Max?
- GLM-5 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Qwen3-Max. GLM-5 is about 1.5x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). Qwen3-Max also takes 262K 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, GLM-5 or Qwen3-Max?
- GLM-5 costs $1/$3.2 per million input/output tokens, while Qwen3-Max costs $1.2/$6. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $14.80 versus $21.00.
- Which model is better for coding, GLM-5 or Qwen3-Max?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — GLM-5 scores ~77.8% versus 69.6% for Qwen3-Max, making GLM-5 the stronger pick for coding agents.