DeepSeek V4-Pro wins on coding (93 vs 91) and price ($0.435 vs $1.4/1M input). For most workflows, DeepSeek V4-Pro is the stronger default — best open-weights flagship — near-frontier coding at a tenth of the price.
The shortest way to see the safest default, the lower-cost option, and the specialist pick before you read deeper.
DeepSeek V4-Pro is the safest overall answer here when you want the strongest default instead of the lowest list price.
Mistral: Mistral Nemo is the lower-cost option to start with when you still need useful output at scale.
GLM-5.3 is the better pick when response speed matters more than maximum reasoning depth.
DeepSeek V4-Pro leads on coding with a score of 93 vs 91 for GLM-5.3.
DeepSeek V4-Pro is cheaper at $0.435/1M input tokens vs $1.4/1M for GLM-5.3.
DeepSeek V4-Pro is the stronger default for coding tasks.
DeepSeek V4-Pro is the safer default: it is built for frontier-level coding and reasoning on a budget, which covers most of what people bring to this comparison.
GLM-5.3 earns its place when your work is mostly agentic engineering and security work on open weights, even though it loses the overall count here.
Both models serve different primary workflows — DeepSeek V4-Pro for frontier-level coding and reasoning on a budget, GLM-5.3 for agentic engineering and security work on open weights — so running each where it has a clear edge often beats forcing one to do both.
Switch the scoring lens to see whether the top answer changes when you care more about cost, speed, or long-document work.
DeepSeek / Budget / Aug 6, 2026
Best open-weights flagship — near-frontier coding at a tenth of the price.
Ranks models by the broadest mix of coding, writing, research, and long-context usefulness.
You need vision input, verified agentic performance, or predictable pricing (surge pricing and an announced increase loom).
The fastest way to see where the recommendation shifts when your priority changes.
Same price as GLM-5.2, far stronger on agents and security.
Best open-weights flagship — near-frontier coding at a tenth of the price.
Every figure below is the provider's list price or a published capability score — the same numbers the recommendation on this page is built from.
| Model | Input | Output | Est. month | Context | Speed | Coding | Writing | Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4-ProDeepSeek | $0.43/1M | $0.87/1M | $6.09 | 1M tokens | Balanced | 93 | 80 | 85 |
| GLM-5.3Z.ai | $1.40/1M | $4.40/1M | $23 | 1M tokens | Balanced | 91 | 79 | 82 |
Capability scores are out of 100 and reflect our own weighting of published benchmarks and production signals — see how we evaluate models. “Est. month” assumes 10M input and 2M output tokens at list price, with no batch or caching discounts applied, so treat it as a ceiling.
What each one is genuinely good at, where it falls down, and the situations we would steer you away from it — not just the headline score.
DeepSeek's 1.6T-parameter (49B active) MoE flagship with hybrid sparse attention — near-frontier coding and reasoning at roughly a tenth of closed-rival pricing, MIT-licensed open weights.
You need vision input, verified agentic performance, or predictable pricing (surge pricing and an announced increase loom).
The open-weights frontier flagship of 2026. Self-reported numbers flatter it and independent agentic scores land lower, but even discounted it's the most capability per dollar in the directory's upper tier — with MIT-licensed weights.
Open-weight preview April 24; GA ~July 20, 2026. Off-peak pricing verified on api-docs.deepseek.com; Beijing-business-hours surge doubles it. Legacy deepseek-chat/reasoner endpoints retired July 24, 2026.
Z.ai's newest flagship, aimed squarely at software engineering, autonomous agents and cybersecurity — and the first open-weights model to beat Claude Mythos 5 on a security benchmark.
Your procurement process requires a SWE-bench Verified figure, or you need the closed-frontier reasoning ceiling.
The clear upgrade over GLM-5.2 at the same price — take it unless you specifically need a published SWE-bench Verified number to sign off on. The security benchmark lead over Mythos 5 is the genuinely new thing here.
Released August 14, 2026. Z.ai list pricing is $1.40/$4.40, the same rate as GLM-5.2; resellers discount from that list. Also available through the GLM Coding Plan from $18/mo. Reported GPQA Diamond 91.7% and Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 59.5.
UseRightAI recommendations are based on practical decision factors people actually feel in day-to-day use.
Newsletter
Useful if you care about ranking shifts, pricing changes, or a better recommendation appearing in this decision path.
No spam. Useful updates only. Affiliate disclosures always clearly labeled.
DeepSeek V4-Pro wins on more of the categories we score — coding, reasoning, budget — so it is the better default of the two. GLM-5.3 is the better pick when your work is mostly agentic engineering and security work on open weights. Neither is universally "better": DeepSeek V4-Pro is aimed at frontier-level coding and reasoning on a budget, GLM-5.3 at agentic engineering and security work on open weights.
DeepSeek V4-Pro is cheaper at $0.435/1M input and $0.87/1M output. GLM-5.3 costs $1.4/1M input and $4.4/1M output.
Both GLM-5.3 and DeepSeek V4-Pro have the same 1M context window.
DeepSeek V4-Pro is better for coding with a score of 93 vs GLM-5.3's 91 (out of 100). Claude Fable 5 is the overall coding leader in this directory at 100/100.
Both GLM-5.3 and DeepSeek V4-Pro have similar speed profiles — rated balanced. Neither will be the bottleneck if latency is your deciding factor.
Independent harnesses report much lower agentic scores than the self-reported numbers; trails GPT-5.6 and Opus-class on hard agentic evals. Peak-hour surge pricing doubles rates, a price increase is announced, and it's text-only (no vision). Avoid it if you need vision input, verified agentic performance, or predictable pricing (surge pricing and an announced increase loom). That is the main case for looking at GLM-5.3 instead.
No published SWE-bench Verified score, so it is absent from the benchmark most buyers compare on. Priced identically to GLM-5.2 at $1.40/$4.40 — the upgrade is capability, not value. Avoid it if your procurement process requires a SWE-bench Verified figure, or you need the closed-frontier reasoning ceiling. Against DeepSeek V4-Pro specifically, the gap shows up most on coding (93 vs 91).
Take a moderate workload of 10M input and 2M output tokens a month. GLM-5.3 runs $22.80 (at $1.4/1M in and $4.4/1M out); DeepSeek V4-Pro runs $6.09 (at $0.435/1M in and $0.87/1M out). That is a $16.71/month difference — DeepSeek V4-Pro is the cheaper of the two at this volume, and the gap scales linearly as you send more. Output tokens dominate the bill on both, so prompt length matters far less than response length.
Yes, and for most teams that beats picking one. A common split is DeepSeek V4-Pro for frontier-level coding and reasoning on a budget, with GLM-5.3 handling agentic engineering and security work on open weights. Since DeepSeek V4-Pro is both the stronger and the cheaper option here, a split mainly makes sense if GLM-5.3 covers a capability you specifically need.