Zhipu AI
Z.ai and BigModel are the international and developer routes for Z.ai/智谱. GLM-5.3 is the newest flagship for complex software engineering, long-horizon agents and cybersecurity analysis, with a 1M-token context, 128K maximum output and low, high or max reasoning effort. It is available to Coding Plan users, while the general API is still marked coming soon and open weights are planned after safety evaluation. GLM-5.2 remains the currently priced API and open-weight option. The wider platform also covers vision, image, video, audio, embedding, agent and tool services, plus HTTP, Python, Java, OpenAI SDK compatibility and LangChain integration paths.
Editorial verdict
Developers comparing Chinese multimodal model APIs, agent services and OpenAI-compatible migration paths.
Avoid treating it as fully internationalized until account signup, billing and support are tested from your target region.
Z.ai now has an English product surface, while BigModel remains the API evidence base for the full GLM product line.
20 million free tokens are promoted; VentureBeat reports GLM-5.2 API pricing at $1.40/M input tokens and $4.40/M output tokens
Free trial tokens, Platform billing, Enterprise sales
Commercial use should follow the current product, API, model license and billing terms.
Review prompt, file, media upload, retention and training-use terms before sensitive workloads.
Use it to compare GLM text, vision, image, video, audio, embedding and rerank APIs.
Official docs include tool calling, web search, OCR, file parsing, batch, fine-tuning and agent APIs.
Docs mention OpenAI SDK compatibility, but production migration still needs endpoint, billing and model-behavior tests.
Use GLM-5.3 through Coding Plan for large implementations, automated research, performance optimization and complex debugging; keep GLM-5.2 for currently documented direct API or local-weight workflows.
Model names, quotas, release status, regional access and commercial terms can change quickly; recheck official sources before procurement or production use.
qwen
deepseek
minimax-api
official · en · verified 2026-08-14
Confirms the release, post-training scaling, coding and cybersecurity gains, required thinking mode, Coding Plan rollout and planned weight release after safety hardening.
docs · en · verified 2026-08-14
Confirms 1M context, 128K output, text modalities, Coding Plan availability and that the general API is coming soon.
official · en · verified 2026-08-04
Confirms the stable 1M-token context, High and Max effort controls, MIT license, open weights, local inference frameworks, Coding Plan rollout and official benchmark disclosures.
other · en · verified 2026-06-21
Reports a 753B-parameter model, $1.40/M input, $4.40/M output and $0.26/M cached-input API rates, and compares vendor-reported benchmarks and pricing with proprietary competitors.
other · en · verified 2026-06-21
Reports GLM-5.2 taking the top Design Arena position ahead of Claude Fable 5; VentureBeat separately reports a 1360 ELO result. Treat this as media-reported arena performance rather than an independently reproduced benchmark.
official · en · verified 2026-05-17
Confirms Z.ai branding, GLM, MaaS, product lineup and free-trial positioning.
docs · zh · verified 2026-05-17
Confirms one-stop MaaS positioning, SDKs, OpenAI SDK compatibility and LangChain integration.
docs · zh · verified 2026-05-17
Lists GLM text, vision, image, video, audio, embedding and other model families.
Last checked: 2026-08-14