DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs GLM-5.3 (Low)

Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) by DeepSeek or GLM-5.3 (Low) by Z AI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

DeepSeekDeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 8.50
Total cost: $25.4

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.30
Total cost: $1013

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Low) scores 25.8 points higher (34.3 vs 8.5) but costs 40× as much to run the benchmark ($1013 vs $25.4; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Low) when you need intelligence above 8.5, and DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) when 8.5 is enough.

Metric	DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)	GLM-5.3 (Low)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	8.5	34.3	+303.5% GLM-5.3 (Low) is 4.0× more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$25.37	$1,012.50	+3890.9% GLM-5.3 (Low) is 40× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	10.23s	30.79s	+201.0% GLM-5.3 (Low) is 201.0% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.32 / $0.89	$1.40 / $4.40
Input modalities	Text	Text

GLM-5.3 (Low) vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): 303.5% more intelligence, 3890.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 201.0% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): what beats it GLM-5.3 (Low): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
GLM-5.3 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)GLM-5.3 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v3/glm-5-3-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v3/glm-5-3-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill