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GLM-5.3 vs GLM-5.3-Flash

glm-5.3glm-5.3-flash
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GLM-5.3 costs $0.976972 per 1M input tokens and $3.070483 per 1M output tokens, with a 1M-token context window; GLM-5.3-Flash costs $0.104676 per 1M input tokens and $0.348919 per 1M output tokens, with a 1M-token context window.

Side by side

Prices in US dollars; limits and capabilities as published by each model’s provider.

GLM-5.3 and GLM-5.3-Flash side by side
SpecGLM-5.3GLM-5.3-Flash
Input/ 1M tokens$0.976972$0.104676
Output/ 1M tokens$3.070483$0.348919
Cache read/ 1M tokens$0.181438$0.020935
Cache write/ 1M tokens$0$0
Discount30% offList price $1.40 / $4.4030% offList price $0.15 / $0.50
Contexttokens1M1M
Max outputtokens128K128K
Input typestexttext, image, video, file
Output typestexttext
Released2026-08-182026-08-26
Tokens, last 7 daystokens—75M
Endpoints/v1/chat/completions/v1/responses/v1/chat/completions/v1/responses

Same workload

One workload of 1,000,000 input and 200,000 output tokens, priced at each model’s current rates.

GLM-5.3
$1.5911$0.977 input + $0.6141 output
GLM-5.3-Flash
$0.1745$0.1047 input + $0.0698 output

For this workload, GLM-5.3-Flash costs $1.4166 less than GLM-5.3.

Same code

Only the model field changes.

curl https://api.cheapaimodel.ai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHEAPAIMODEL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "glm-5.3",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

When to choose which

Differences in the published specs, then each provider’s own description.

  • GLM-5.3-Flash has the lower input price ($0.104676 vs $0.976972 per 1M tokens).
  • GLM-5.3-Flash has the lower output price ($0.348919 vs $3.070483 per 1M tokens).
  • GLM-5.3-Flash accepts image, video, and file input; GLM-5.3 doesn’t.
  • GLM-5.3-Flash was released more recently (2026-08-26 vs 2026-08-18).

About GLM-5.3

Z.ai's flagship GLM model for complex software engineering and agentic work. It keeps GLM-5.2's base model, with post-training gains in coding, long-horizon tasks and cybersecurity, and currently accepts text input only.

About GLM-5.3-Flash

The first natively multimodal model in Z.ai's GLM-5 series, taking text, image, video and file input. Z.ai positions it as stronger than GLM-5.2 at a much lower cost.

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