Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs GLM-5.1 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) by Z AI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick GLM-5.1 (Reasoning)
GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 26.1% more intelligence, 1.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 198.3% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 26.1 | +26.1% GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is 26.1% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,486.78 | −1.0% GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is 1.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 64.38s | +198.3% GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is 198.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $1.28 / $4.07 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)GLM-5.1 (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/glm-5-1 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/glm-5-1?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill