Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs GLM-5.3 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) 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 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 10.3 points higher (44.8 vs 34.5) but costs 44× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $56.4; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 34.5, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) when 34.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) | GLM-5.3 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 44.8 | +29.9% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 29.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $2,503.48 | +4341.9% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 44× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.41s | 31.61s | +203.7% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 203.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $1.40 / $4.40 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 29.9% more intelligence, 4341.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 203.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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 Haiku 5.5 (Medium)GLM-5.3 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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