Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs GLM-5.1 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) 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 Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)
GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 7.1% less intelligence, 22.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 573.3% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 26.1 | −7.1% GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is 7.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $1,486.78 | +22.1% GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is 22.1% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.01s | 60.66s | +573.3% GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is 573.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $1.28 / $4.07 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)GLM-5.1 (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/glm-5-1 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/glm-5-1?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill