Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs GLM-5.3-Flash
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or GLM-5.3-Flash 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-5.3-Flash
GLM-5.3-Flash vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 101.9% more intelligence, 79.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 86.4% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | GLM-5.3-Flash | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 41.8 | +101.9% GLM-5.3-Flash is 2.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $305.52 | −79.6% GLM-5.3-Flash is 79.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.86s | 38.89s | +86.4% GLM-5.3-Flash is 86.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.15 / $0.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
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-5.3-Flash is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)GLM-5.3-FlashToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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