In short
How they differ.
Worked out from the figures below. Prices and specs are the makers' own, read Oct 20, 2026.
- GLM-5.3 is cheaper per output token: $4.40 against $50 per million tokens, so GPT-6 Astra costs 11.4 times as much.
- GPT-6 Astra reads more at once: a context window of 1M tokens against 1M.
- GLM-5.3 can be downloaded and run on your own machine; GPT-6 Astra can't.
- On the 5 independent boards that rank both, GPT-6 Astra places higher on 5 and GLM-5.3 on 0.
Side by side
The specs.
| GLM-5.3 | GPT-6 Astra | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) · China | OpenAI · US |
| Released | Not stated | Sep 3, 2026 |
| Price per 1M tokens | $1.40 in / $4.40 out | $10 in / $50 out |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Takes in | text | text, image |
| Download and run it yourself | Yes (glm-5.3 (license tag shown on Hugging Face)) | No |
| Size | 753B (Hugging Face safetensors size field) parameters | Not published |
| Maker says | “GLM-5.3 is Z.ai's latest flagship model, delivering comprehensive advancements in complex software engineering” | “Our most capable model for the most demanding work.” |
| Sources | Prices, Oct 20, 2026 · Description | Prices, Oct 20, 2026 · Description |
Independent tests
Where they place.
Position on each board we follow (1 is best). Epoch AI's and Vectara's scores are shown; the other boards are linked for their own figures.
| Board | GLM-5.3 | GPT-6 Astra |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities IndexEpoch AI, Oct 20, 2026 | #30155.91 | #2166.41 |
| LMArena coding chatsLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #9 |
| LMArena WebDevLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #2 |
| LMArena documentsLMArena, Sep 13, 2026 | Not listed | #16 |
| LMArena Agent ArenaLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #2 |
| Humanity's Last ExamScale AI | #15 | #1 |
| SWE-Bench ProScale AI, Sep 22, 2026 | #9 | #5 |
| Remote Labor IndexScale AI | Not listed | #2 |
| Vals IndexVals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | #9 | #5 |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0Vals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | #12 | #3 |
| Vibe Code BenchVals AI, Oct 18, 2026 | Not listed | #7 |
| ProofBenchVals AI, Oct 12, 2026 | Not listed | #6 |
| CUA-bench (games)Vals AI, Oct 13, 2026 | Not listed | #1 |
| Vectara hallucination testVectara, Oct 16, 2026 | Not listed | #458.7% |
More comparisons