Claude Opus 5 (Max) vs GLM-5.3 (Max)

Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Max) 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

AnthropicClaude Opus 5 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 50.80
Total cost: $7275

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 44.80
Total cost: $2503

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Opus 5 (Max) scores 6.0 points higher (50.8 vs 44.8) but costs 2.9× as much to run the benchmark ($7275 vs $2503; both flagship class). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GLM-5.3 (Max).

Metric	Claude Opus 5 (Max)	GLM-5.3 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	50.8	44.8	−11.8% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 11.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$7,274.74	$2,503.48	−65.6% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 65.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	49.99s	31.62s	−36.7% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 36.7% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$5.00 / $25.0	$1.40 / $4.40
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Claude Opus 5 (Max): 11.8% less intelligence, 65.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 36.7% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Opus 5 (Max): what beats it GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Opus 5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
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 (Max)GLM-5.3 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5/glm-5-3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5/glm-5-3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill