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 4.6
- Cost
- $0.43 in · $1.75 out per 1M tokensBudget
- Memory
- 205K tokens — about 300 pages
- Reads
- Text
- Can do
- Use tools (agents)
- Structured output
- Thinking mode
- Good at
- Coding: better than 47%
- Reliability
- 99.92% uptime, last 24h
- Released
- Sep 30, 2025
Advanced details
- API model ID
z-ai/glm-4.6- Max output
- 16K tokens
- Cached input
- $0.08 per 1M
- Knowledge cutoff
- 2025-03-31
- Tokenizer
- Other
- Coding index
- 45.8
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venice · fp4 | $0.43 | $1.75 | $0.08 | 16K | 99.80% |
| DeepInfra · fp4 | $0.50 | $2.00 | $0.10 | 131K | 99.92% |
| Novita · bf16 | $0.55 | $2.20 | $0.11 | 131K | 98.13% |
| Z.AI · fp4 | $0.60 | $2.20 | $0.11 | 131K | 99.38% |
Supported parameters
- frequency_penalty
- include_reasoning
- logit_bias
- max_tokens
- min_p
- presence_penalty
- reasoning
- repetition_penalty
- response_format
- seed
- stop
- structured_outputs
- temperature
- tool_choice
- tools
- top_k
- top_p
Live from OpenRouter, refreshed hourly. Scores from Artificial Analysis.
Key info
- Pricing
- Open source
- Category
- Models
- Best for
- Intermediate
- Made by
- Z.ai
- Weights
- Open
- Good for
- Coding on a budget