GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Grok 4.3 (High)

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Max) by Z AI or Grok 4.3 (High) by SpaceXAI? 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

SpaceXAIGrok 4.3 (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 24.90
Total cost: $363

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 19.9 points higher (44.8 vs 24.9) but costs 6.9× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $363; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 24.9, and Grok 4.3 (High) when 24.9 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Max)	Grok 4.3 (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	44.8	24.9	−44.4% Grok 4.3 (High) is 44.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,503.48	$363.24	−85.5% Grok 4.3 (High) is 85.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	31.62s	24.88s	−21.3% Grok 4.3 (High) is 21.3% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$1.25 / $2.50
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

Grok 4.3 (High) vs GLM-5.3 (Max): 44.4% less intelligence, 85.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 21.3% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it Grok 4.3 (High): 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.
Grok 4.3 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.

GLM-5.3 (Max)Grok 4.3 (High)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/grok-4-3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3/grok-4-3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill