GLM-5.3 (Max) vs GPT-6 Astra (Max)

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Max) by Z AI or GPT-6 Astra (Max) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 44.80
Total cost: $2503

OpenAIGPT-6 Astra (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 52.70
Total cost: $5324

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6 Astra (Max) scores 7.9 points higher (52.7 vs 44.8) but costs 2.1× as much to run the benchmark ($5324 vs $2503; both flagship class). Pick GPT-6 Astra (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GLM-5.3 (Max).

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Max)	GPT-6 Astra (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	44.8	52.7	+17.6% GPT-6 Astra (Max) is 17.6% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,503.48	$5,324.10	+112.7% GPT-6 Astra (Max) is 2.1× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.79s	280.26s	+873.5% GPT-6 Astra (Max) is 873.5% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$10.0 / $50.0
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

GPT-6 Astra (Max) vs GLM-5.3 (Max): 17.6% more intelligence, 112.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 873.5% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it GPT-6 Astra (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

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.
GPT-6 Astra (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.

GLM-5.3 (Max)GPT-6 Astra (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/gpt-6-astra · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3/gpt-6-astra?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill