Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs GLM-5.3 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) 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.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 16.4% less intelligence, 15.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 6.5% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | GLM-5.3 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 44.8 | −16.4% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 16.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $2,503.48 | +15.2% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 15.2% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 31.61s | −6.5% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 6.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $1.40 / $4.40 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) 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 Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)GLM-5.3 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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