GLM-5.3 (Low) vs GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Low) by Z AI or GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.30
Total cost: $1013

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Terra (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 42.10
Total cost: $2501

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) scores 7.8 points higher (42.1 vs 34.3) but costs 2.5× as much to run the benchmark ($2501 vs $1013; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GLM-5.3 (Low).

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Low)	GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	34.3	42.1	+22.7% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 22.7% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,012.50	$2,500.72	+147.0% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 2.5× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	30.92s	110.99s	+259.0% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 259.0% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$2.00 / $12.0
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) vs GLM-5.3 (Low): 22.7% more intelligence, 147.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 259.0% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Low): what beats it GPT-5.6 Terra (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.3 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.

GLM-5.3 (Low)GPT-5.6 Terra (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-5-3-low/gpt-5-6-terra · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3-low/gpt-5-6-terra?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill