GLM
Z.ai's open-weight family, behind the cheap coding subscriptions.
GLM is the model family from Z.ai, and the reason its coding plan turns up in every "cheaper than Claude Code" thread — the weights are published, plenty of providers serve them, and the Flash models are some of the cheapest usable coding models anywhere. The 5.3 line runs to a million tokens of context, with Flash variants that also read images and video. Z.ai's own chat app is listed separately under Chats.
At a glance — GLM 5.3 Prime
- Cost
- $2.80 in · $8.80 out per 1M tokensMid-range
- Memory
- 1M tokens — about 1,500 pages
- Reads
- Text
- Can do
- Use tools (agents)
- Structured output
- Thinking mode
- Reliability
- 99.38% uptime, last 24h
- Released
- Sep 23, 2026
Advanced details
- API model ID
z-ai/glm-5.3-prime- Max output
- 131K tokens
- Cached input
- $0.56 per 1M
- Tokenizer
- Other
Providers
The same model, hosted by different companies. OpenRouter picks one per request and falls back to the next if it fails.
| Provider | Input /1M | Output /1M | Cached /1M | Max output | Uptime 24h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alibaba | $2.80 | $8.80 | $0.56 | 131K | 99.38% |
Supported parameters
- frequency_penalty
- include_reasoning
- logprobs
- max_tokens
- presence_penalty
- reasoning
- reasoning_effort
- response_format
- seed
- stop
- temperature
- tool_choice
- tools
- top_k
- top_logprobs
- top_p
Live from OpenRouter, refreshed hourly.
Key info
- Pricing
- Open source
- Category
- Models
- Best for
- Intermediate
- Made by
- Z.ai
- Weights
- Open
- Good for
- Coding on a budget