Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs GLM-5.3-Flash
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 2.5% more intelligence, 50.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 550.3% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | GLM-5.3-Flash | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 41.8 | +2.5% GLM-5.3-Flash is 2.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $305.52 | −50.9% GLM-5.3-Flash is 50.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.98s | 38.89s | +550.3% GLM-5.3-Flash is 550.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.15 / $0.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- GLM-5.3-Flash is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)GLM-5.3-FlashToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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