GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Max) by Z AI or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? 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

AlibabaQwen3.8 Max (0902)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 45.40
Total cost: $4935

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 0.6 points higher (45.4 vs 44.8) but costs 2.0× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $2503; both flagship class). Pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GLM-5.3 (Max).

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Max)	Qwen3.8 Max (0902)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	44.8	45.4	+1.3% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 1.3% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,503.48	$4,934.79	+97.1% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 97.1% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.79s	65.39s	+127.1% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 127.1% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$2.00 / $6.00
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs GLM-5.3 (Max): 1.3% more intelligence, 97.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 127.1% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it Qwen3.8 Max (0902): 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.
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)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/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill