GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Solar Mini 4

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Max) by Z AI or Solar Mini 4 by Upstage? 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

UpstageSolar Mini 4Off the frontier

Intelligence: 24.10
Total cost: $502

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 20.7 points higher (44.8 vs 24.1) but costs 5.0× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $502; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 24.1, and Solar Mini 4 when 24.1 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Max)	Solar Mini 4	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	44.8	24.1	−46.2% Solar Mini 4 is 46.2% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,503.48	$502.02	−79.9% Solar Mini 4 is 79.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.28s	23.10s	−18.3% Solar Mini 4 is 18.3% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.10 / $0.40
Input modalities	Text	Text

Solar Mini 4 vs GLM-5.3 (Max): 46.2% less intelligence, 79.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 18.3% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it Solar Mini 4: 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.
Solar Mini 4 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.

GLM-5.3 (Max)Solar Mini 4Today'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/solar-mini4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3/solar-mini4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill