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.
Huge agentic gains over GLM-5.2: Terminal-Bench 3.0 from 4.6 to 28.3, DeepSWE v1.1 from 46.2 to 66.9, SWE-Marathon v1.1 from 19.4 to 42.5
84.5% on CyberGym, narrowly ahead of Claude Mythos 5 at 83.8%; ExploitBench more than doubled from 24.4% to 54.4%
88.2% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 with a 1M token context window
Weaknesses
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
Real-world use cases
What people actually use GLM-5.3 for.
Long-horizon autonomous engineering tasks where GLM-5.2 ran out of headroom
Offensive and defensive security tooling — 84.5% on CyberGym, ahead of Claude Mythos 5
Self-hosted or coding-plan deployments that need frontier-adjacent quality at open-weights pricing
How GLM-5.3 compares
The nearest models people weigh against it, and what actually separates them.
vs GLM-5.2 — Against GLM-5.2 (Z.ai), GLM-5.3 lands within a few percent on price. Which one wins depends on whether context depth or latency is your constraint.
vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — Against DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (DeepSeek), GLM-5.3 costs about 74% more per token, gives up 1x on context and answers slower. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is the one to check first if the price difference matters more than the ceiling.
vs DeepSeek V4-Pro — Against DeepSeek V4-Pro (DeepSeek), GLM-5.3 costs about 78% more per token. DeepSeek V4-Pro is the one to check first if the price difference matters more than the ceiling.
Price History
GLM-5.3 pricing over time
→0% since Sep 1
43 data points · tracked daily since Sep 1, 2026
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Start using GLM-5.3
Agentic engineering and security work on open weights. Start free — no card required.
Z.ai's MIT-licensed open-weight flagship — the top open-weights coding model of mid-2026, beating GPT-5.5 on agentic coding benchmarks at roughly a sixth of the cost.
Verdict
Top open-weights coder — beats GPT-5.5 at a sixth of the cost.
Quality score
80%
Pricing
$1.40/1M in
$4.40/1M out
Speed
Balanced
3/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
Announced June 13, 2026; pay-per-token API live June 16. Two reasoning modes ('thinking' and 'max thinking'). GLM Coding Plan: Lite $18/mo (~$12.60 effective yearly), Pro $72, Max $160.
DeepSeek's September 10, 2026 release, now its top API model: a natively multimodal, MIT-licensed model with 1M context that DeepSeek says beats its own V4-Pro on coding and agent work — V4-Pro traffic has been routed to it since September 14.
Verdict
DeepSeek's open, cheap new default — V4-Pro now routes to it.
Quality score
84%
Pricing
$0.30/1M in
$1.20/1M out
Speed
Fast
4/5 speed
Context
1.0M tokens
Released September 10, 2026; previous V4 Flash and V4 Flash Vision endpoints taken offline the same day. From September 14, 2026, requests to deepseek-v4-pro are served by V4.1 Flash at Flash rates until a V4.1-Pro ships. Gateway id deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash; gateway price $0.30/$1.20 per 1M (varies by host; DeepSeek's own API uses peak and off-peak rates). 1,048,576 context, 32,768 max output on the gateway. Weights on Hugging Face, MIT licence. Verified October 10, 2026.
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.
Verdict
Former DeepSeek flagship — API requests now run on V4.1 Flash.
Quality score
82%
Pricing
$0.43/1M in
$0.87/1M out
Speed
Balanced
3/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
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. Since September 14, 2026, DeepSeek routes deepseek-v4-pro API requests to DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, billed at Flash rates, until a V4.1-Pro ships.
GLM-5.3 costs $1.4 per million input tokens and $4.4 per million output tokens on the API. A month of 10M input and 2M output tokens runs about $22.80 at list price, before any batch or caching discounts.
What is the context window of GLM-5.3?
GLM-5.3 has a 1M tokens context window, with up to 1M tokens of output per response. That is the total of prompt plus response the model can hold in one request.
What is GLM-5.3 best for?
GLM-5.3 is best for agentic engineering and security work on open weights. It is a strong fit when that workflow matters more than the tradeoffs around budget pricing and balanced speed.
When should I avoid GLM-5.3?
Your procurement process requires a SWE-bench Verified figure, or you need the closed-frontier reasoning ceiling.
What is a cheaper alternative to GLM-5.3?
DeepSeek V4-Pro (DeepSeek) at $0.43/1M/1M input against GLM-5.3's $1.40/1M/1M — roughly 78% less per token all in. Former DeepSeek flagship — API requests now run on V4.1 Flash. Compare it first if GLM-5.3's pricing is the thing stopping you.
What is a faster alternative to GLM-5.3?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — fast against GLM-5.3's balanced, with 1.0M tokens of context. Worth the swap when response time is what your users notice rather than the last few points of reasoning depth.
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