GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) vs GLM-5.3 (Max)

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) by Z AI 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.

Trade-off

Z AIGLM-5.1 (Reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 26.10
Total cost: $1487

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 44.80
Total cost: $2503

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 18.7 points higher (44.8 vs 26.1) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $1487; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GLM-5.1 (Reasoning).

Metric	GLM-5.1 (Reasoning)	GLM-5.3 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	26.1	44.8	+71.6% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 71.6% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,486.78	$2,503.48	+68.4% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 68.4% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	63.24s	31.61s	−50.0% GLM-5.3 (Max) is 50.0% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.28 / $4.07	$1.40 / $4.40
Input modalities	Text	Text

GLM-5.3 (Max) vs GLM-5.1 (Reasoning): 71.6% more intelligence, 68.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 50.0% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.1 (Reasoning): what beats it GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.1 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
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.

GLM-5.1 (Reasoning)GLM-5.3 (Max)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/glm-5-1/glm-5-3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-1/glm-5-3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill