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GLM-5 Review

GLM-5 is Zhipu AI's flagship open-source large language model family, designed for complex systems engineering and long-horizon agentic tasks with strong reasoning and coding capabilities.

shipped Jul 5, 2026aipaid
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GLM-5 — product screenshot

Why it matters

1GLM-5 is built on a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, featuring approximately 745 billion total parameters.
2The GLM-5.2 model offers a 1-million-token context window for advanced applications.
3GLM-5.2 API pricing is approximately one-sixth of GPT-5.5.
4The free tier provides 20.00 million tokens for initial use.

Specs

API Available

Yes, public API

overview

What is GLM-5?

GLM-5 is a large language model family tool developed by Zhipu AI that enables developers and engineers to develop complex AI agents and software systems. It is engineered for autonomous planning, tool use, and executing complex, long-horizon tasks, moving beyond simple 'vibe coding' to 'agentic engineering'. The GLM-5 series, developed by Zhipu AI (Z.ai), is designed for frontier-level performance across various complex tasks, emphasizing agentic intelligence, multi-step reasoning, and coding. Its core capabilities include advanced coding for writing, editing, and managing software projects, and creative writing. The GLM-5V-Turbo variant extends these capabilities with native support for images, video, and documents, facilitating vision-based coding tasks, UI understanding, and computer-use agent workflows. Other multimodal features encompass AI image generation, AI audio generation (including voice cloning), and advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Main use cases focus on automating complex software development, enhancing analytical and planning tasks, and powering multimodal AI agents.

features

Key Features of GLM-5

The GLM-5 family of models provides a comprehensive set of features for advanced AI development and agentic applications.

  • Strong reasoning capabilities for complex analytical problems and mathematical proofs.
  • Advanced coding capabilities, including writing, editing, and managing software projects.
  • Open-source large language model family, providing flexibility for developers.
  • GLM-5.2 offers a 1-million-token context window for sustained long-horizon tasks.
  • GLM-5V-Turbo is a multimodal coding model optimized for vision-based tasks and UI understanding.
  • Autonomous planning, reasoning, and execution through AutoGLM for complex workflows.
  • Flexible fine-tuning options available for both language and multimodal models.
  • Cross-app and cross-device task execution capabilities via AutoGLM.
  • Includes AI image generation, AI audio generation (with voice cloning), and advanced OCR.

use cases

Who Should Use GLM-5?

GLM-5 is designed for specific technical applications and user groups requiring advanced AI capabilities.

  • Developers and engineers engaged in complex systems engineering and software development.
  • AI agent builders requiring models for long-horizon agentic tasks and autonomous task planning.
  • Software developers seeking advanced coding assistance for real-world coding tasks and end-to-end software engineering.
  • Researchers and practitioners focused on advanced reasoning, mathematical proofs, and scientific analysis.
  • Users needing multimodal AI agents for visual development, UI understanding, and computer-use agent workflows.

how to use

How to Use GLM-5

GLM-5 models are accessible through Zhipu AI's platform and WaveSpeed API, providing a structured approach for integration and deployment.

  • 1Access GLM-5 models via Zhipu AI's platform or the WaveSpeed API.
  • 2Utilize the End-to-End Development Suite for building and deploying applications.
  • 3Leverage flexible fine-tuning options to customize language and multimodal models for specific tasks.
  • 4Integrate GLM-5.2's 1-million-token context window for managing extensive, long-horizon agentic tasks.
  • 5Employ the GLM-5V-Turbo variant for vision-based coding and multimodal agent workflows.
  • 6Utilize the ZCode harness to develop autonomous coding assistants and AI agents.

pricing

GLM-5 Pricing & Plans

GLM-5 operates on a freemium model, offering a free tier for initial access and paid options for expanded usage and advanced features. The API pricing for GLM-5.2 is noted to be significantly lower than that of top-tier Western models, such as GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus, making it a cost-effective solution for many developers.

  • Free Tier: Includes 20.00 million tokens for evaluation and light usage.
  • Paid Tier: Offers access to advanced models, higher usage limits, and enhanced features, with specific pricing available upon inquiry or through the Zhipu AI platform.

Pros

  • +Offers competitive performance against frontier models like Claude Opus and GPT-5.x, particularly in coding and agentic tasks.
  • +Provides significantly lower API pricing compared to top-tier Western models, with GLM-5.2 API pricing approximately one-sixth of GPT-5.5.
  • +Demonstrates strong coding capabilities, excelling in real-world and end-to-end software engineering challenges.
  • +GLM-5.2 features a stable 1-million-token context window, crucial for sustaining long-horizon work.
  • +Includes multimodal capabilities (GLM-5V-Turbo) for vision-based coding, UI understanding, and computer-use agent workflows.
  • +Achieved full independence from US-manufactured semiconductor hardware, trained entirely on Huawei Ascend chips.

Cons

  • −Early versions of GLM-5 exhibited sluggishness in sequential operations compared to the parallel processing of Claude models.
  • −Despite strong performance, GLM-5.2 still trails OpenAI and Anthropic models in certain research benchmarks.
  • −While an 'open-source family,' access to the latest iterations like GLM-5.2 is initially via Zhipu AI's platform and API, with open weights following later.

Policies

Free Tier

Vendor website advertises a free tier.

Similar Tools

GLM-5 vs Competitors

GLM-5 competes in the frontier LLM space, offering distinct advantages and architectural choices compared to other leading models.

1
Mistral LargeOn StorkCompare

Offers a powerful open-weight Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture with a large context window, excelling in multilingual and long-context reasoning tasks.

Similar to GLM-5, Mistral Large is an open-weight MoE model with strong reasoning and coding capabilities, designed for agentic workflows and complex applications. It offers a larger context window (256K tokens for Mistral Large 3 vs 128K output for GLM-5) and includes image understanding.

2
Meta Llama 3On StorkCompare

A leading open-source LLM family from Meta, known for its strong performance across various NLP tasks, advanced coding skills, and improved reasoning.

Llama 3 is also an open-source LLM family like GLM-5, offering strong reasoning and coding. While GLM-5 emphasizes complex systems engineering, Llama 3 is broadly applicable for agentic applications and has a context window up to 128,000 tokens for its largest models.

3
DeepSeek AI (DeepSeek-V3.2 / DeepSeek-R1)↗

Provides a family of open-source LLMs specifically optimized for elite math reasoning and cost-efficient coding at scale, with a focus on agentic workloads.

DeepSeek models, like GLM-5, are open-source and excel in reasoning and coding, particularly for agentic tasks. DeepSeek-V3.2 features a 128K context window and MoE architecture, directly competing with GLM-5's architectural and capability strengths.

4
Anthropic (Claude 3 Opus)On StorkCompare

Anthropic's most intelligent proprietary model, offering best-in-market performance on highly complex tasks, advanced reasoning, and strong vision capabilities.

Claude 3 Opus is a proprietary model, unlike the open-source nature of GLM-5, but it directly competes in the high-performance segment for complex agentic tasks, reasoning, and coding, with GLM-5.1 explicitly benchmarking against it. It has a 200K token context window and is priced per token.

5
OpenAI (GPT-5)On StorkCompare

OpenAI's latest coding-first model, designed for deep code understanding, repository-wide edits, and multi-file reasoning, with strong integration for tool and API usage.

GPT-5 is a proprietary model, similar to Claude 3 Opus, and directly competes with GLM-5 in advanced coding, reasoning, and agentic workflows for complex systems. While GLM-5 is an open-source family with paid access, GPT-5 is a fully proprietary, paid offering.

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