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 $6 per million tokens, so Qwen3.8-Max costs 1.4 times as much.
- GLM-5.3 can be downloaded and run on your own machine; Qwen3.8-Max can't.
- On the 2 independent boards that rank both, each places higher on 1.
Side by side
The specs.
| GLM-5.3 | Qwen3.8-Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) · China | Alibaba (Qwen) · China |
| Released | Not stated | Sep 2, 2026 |
| Price per 1M tokens | $1.40 in / $4.40 out | $2 in / $6 out |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Takes in | text | text, image, video |
| Download and run it yourself | Yes (glm-5.3 (license tag shown on Hugging Face)) | No |
| Size | 753B (Hugging Face safetensors size field) parameters | 2.4T (MoE) parameters, 95B active |
| Maker says | “GLM-5.3 is Z.ai's latest flagship model, delivering comprehensive advancements in complex software engineering” | “A 2.4-trillion-parameter MoE flagship with a major leap in coding and office productivity” |
| Sources | Prices, Oct 20, 2026 · Description | Prices, Oct 11, 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 | Qwen3.8-Max |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities IndexEpoch AI, Oct 20, 2026 | #30155.91 | #20156.88 |
| LMArena creative writingLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #19 |
| LMArena WebDevLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #11 |
| LMArena mathLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #18 |
| LMArena visionLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #2 |
| Humanity's Last ExamScale AI | #15 | Not listed |
| SWE-Bench ProScale AI, Sep 22, 2026 | #9 | Not listed |
| Vals IndexVals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | #9 | Not listed |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0Vals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | #12 | #16 |
| GPQA Diamond (run by Vals AI, archived)Vals AI, Sep 1, 2026 | Not listed | #6 |
| MMMU Pro (run by Vals AI, archived)Vals AI, Sep 1, 2026 | Not listed | #12 |
More comparisons