Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs GLM-5.3 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or GLM-5.3 (Max) by Z AI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 27.9 points higher (44.8 vs 16.9) but costs 4.2× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $594; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 16.9, and Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) when 16.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | GLM-5.3 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 44.8 | +165.1% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 2.7× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $2,503.48 | +321.4% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 4.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 23.70s | 28.73s | +21.2% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 21.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $1.40 / $4.40 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 165.1% more intelligence, 321.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 21.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- GLM-5.3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)GLM-5.3 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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