Released August 26, 2026. 320B total parameters, 18B active (320B-A18B MoE). Z.ai lists $0.15/1M input, $0.03/1M cached input and $0.50/1M output, with a launch promotion halving those rates through September 9, 2026. Self-reported against GLM-5.2: DeepSWE 63.4 vs 46.2, AutomationBench 48.8 vs 26.2.
$0.15/$0.50 with $0.03 cached input — frontier-adjacent capability at budget-tier pricing
First natively multimodal model in the GLM-5 series: vision and video built in, not bolted on
MIT-licensed weights with a 1M token context and only 18B active parameters per token
Weaknesses
No published SWE-bench Verified score
The launch promotion halves these rates only through September 9, 2026 — the $0.15/$0.50 list price applies after that
Real-world use cases
What people actually use GLM-5.3 Flash for.
High-volume image and video understanding where per-token cost decides the architecture
Self-hosted multimodal pipelines under an MIT license with no commercial restrictions
Bulk coding and automation work — DeepSWE 63.4 against GLM-5.2's 46.2
How GLM-5.3 Flash compares
The nearest models people weigh against it, and what actually separates them.
vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — Against DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (DeepSeek), GLM-5.3 Flash runs about 57% cheaper per token and gives up 1x on context. Take GLM-5.3 Flash unless you specifically need what DeepSeek V4.1 Flash does better.
vs GLM-5.2 — Against GLM-5.2 (Z.ai), GLM-5.3 Flash runs about 89% cheaper per token and answers faster. Take GLM-5.3 Flash unless you specifically need what GLM-5.2 does better.
vs GLM-5.3 — Against GLM-5.3 (Z.ai), GLM-5.3 Flash runs about 89% cheaper per token and answers faster. Take GLM-5.3 Flash unless you specifically need what GLM-5.3 does better.
Price History
GLM-5.3 Flash pricing over time
→0% since Sep 1
43 data points · tracked daily since Sep 1, 2026
Ready to try it?
Start using GLM-5.3 Flash
Cheap multimodal work at scale on MIT-licensed weights. Start free — no card required.
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.
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.
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.
Verdict
Same price as GLM-5.2, far stronger on agents and security.
Quality score
81%
Pricing
$1.40/1M in
$4.40/1M out
Speed
Balanced
3/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
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.
Open weightsAgenticSecurity1M context
Best for
Agentic engineering and security work on open weights
GLM-5.3 Flash costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.5 per million output tokens on the API. A month of 10M input and 2M output tokens runs about $2.50 at list price, before any batch or caching discounts.
What is the context window of GLM-5.3 Flash?
GLM-5.3 Flash has a 1M tokens context window, with up to 131k 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 Flash best for?
GLM-5.3 Flash is best for cheap multimodal work at scale on mit-licensed weights. It is a strong fit when that workflow matters more than the tradeoffs around budget pricing and fast speed.
When should I avoid GLM-5.3 Flash?
You need top-tier reasoning or a published SWE-bench Verified figure — this is a volume model, not a ceiling model.
What is a cheaper alternative to GLM-5.3 Flash?
Mistral Small 3.1 (Mistral) at $0.10/1M/1M input against GLM-5.3 Flash's $0.15/1M/1M — roughly 38% less per token all in. Ultra-cheap multimodal model for massive-volume, low-complexity pipelines. Compare it first if GLM-5.3 Flash's pricing is the thing stopping you.
What is a faster alternative to GLM-5.3 Flash?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — fast against GLM-5.3 Flash's fast, 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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