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Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GLM-5
A detailed comparison of Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) and GLM-5 (Zhipu AI) across pricing, performance, and features.
Pricing Comparison
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GLM-5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $3.00 | $1.00 | -67% |
| Output / 1M tokens | $15.00 | $3.20 | -79% |
| Context window | 200K | 200K | — |
| Max output | 16K | 128K | — |
Benchmark Comparison
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GLM-5 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 86% | 70.4% |
| HumanEval | 94% | 91% |
| GPQA | 70% | 72% |
Capabilities
| Capability | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GLM-5 |
|---|---|---|
| code | ✓ | ✓ |
| reasoning | ✓ | ✓ |
| text | ✓ | ✓ |
| tool-use | ✓ | ✓ |
| vision | ✓ | ✓ |
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Strengths
- ✓Opus 4.5 quality at 1/5th the cost
- ✓Best value for production workloads
- ✓1M context in beta
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Weaknesses
- ✗Long context pricing doubles above 200K
- ✗Slightly below Opus 4.6 on hardest tasks
GLM-5 Strengths
- ✓Open-weight (MIT license) — self-hostable
- ✓77.8% SWE-Bench Verified — top-tier coding
- ✓128K max output — huge generation window
GLM-5 Weaknesses
- ✗MMLU-Pro lags behind Western flagships
- ✗744B parameters — heavy to self-host
- ✗China-based — availability concerns
Quick Verdict
Best value: GLM-5 is the more affordable option at $1/$3.2 per 1M tokens.
Higher benchmarks: Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on average across available benchmarks (83.3% avg).
Choose GLM-5 if cost matters most. Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need the best possible quality for complex tasks.