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 4.5 Air
- Cost
- $0.13 in · $0.85 out per 1M tokensBudget
- Memory
- 131K tokens — about 200 pages
- Reads
- Text
- Can do
- Use tools (agents)
- Structured output (not supported)
- Thinking mode
- Reliability
- 99.79% uptime, last 24h
- Released
- Jul 25, 2025
Advanced details
- API model ID
z-ai/glm-4.5-air- Max output
- 98K tokens
- Cached input
- $0.025 per 1M
- Knowledge cutoff
- 2024-12-31
- 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Novita · bf16 | $0.13 | $0.85 | $0.025 | 98K | 99.79% |
| SiliconFlow · fp8 | $0.14 | $0.86 | — | 118K | 66.16% |
| Z.AI · fp8 | $0.20 | $1.10 | $0.03 | 98K | 76.81% |
Supported parameters
- frequency_penalty
- include_reasoning
- max_tokens
- presence_penalty
- reasoning
- repetition_penalty
- seed
- stop
- temperature
- tool_choice
- tools
- top_k
- 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