GLM-5.2 (Max) vs Qwen3 Coder Next

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.2 (Max) by Z AI or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-10.

Trade-off

Z AIGLM-5.2 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 33.70
Total cost: $2097

AlibabaQwen3 Coder NextOff the frontier

Intelligence: 9.20
Total cost: $663

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.2 (Max) scores 24.5 points higher (33.7 vs 9.2) but costs 3.2× as much to run the benchmark ($2097 vs $663; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.2 (Max) when you need intelligence above 9.2, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 9.2 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.2 (Max)	Qwen3 Coder Next	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	33.7	9.2	−72.7% Qwen3 Coder Next is 72.7% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,097.29	$662.85	−68.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 68.4% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	34.72s	7.71s	−77.8% Qwen3 Coder Next is 77.8% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.50 / $1.20
Input modalities	Text	Text

Qwen3 Coder Next vs GLM-5.2 (Max): 72.7% less intelligence, 68.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.2 (Max): what beats it Qwen3 Coder Next: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.2 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.

GLM-5.2 (Max)Qwen3 Coder NextToday'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-5-2/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-2/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill