Model index · Text · text generation · reasoning · open weights · Z.ai · released 2026-06-16

GLM 5.2 pricing

Served by 33 providers from $0.7525 to $3.55 per 1M tokens on the standard tier — a 4.7× gap for identical weights.

A reasoning model — the headline price is not the whole bill

This model thinks before it answers, and those thinking tokens are billed at the output rate while never appearing in the response. A request can therefore cost several times what the per-1M figure suggests, and the multiplier depends on your prompts rather than on anything we can publish. Compare it against other reasoning models — the alternatives below are ordered to put those first.

GLM 5.2 is a large-scale reasoning model from Z.ai. It supports text input and output with a 1M-token context window, and is suited for long-horizon agent workflows, project-level software engineering,...

Z.ai · 753.33B parameters · mit · first published 2026-06-16 · Text model · text generation · 1.05M context · description as published by the source, not written by us

Open weights: zai-org/GLM-5.2 · 753.33B parameters counted from the weight files · licence mit · 2.5M downloads in the last 30 days . Parameter count and licence come from the public weights registry, not from a seller — and the download figure exists only for models published this way, so it is not a market-wide popularity measure.

$0.7525

Cheapest standard /1M — Baidu

1.05M

Native context window

34

Providers serving it

n/a

Not scoreable via this route

We could not score this model — a limit of our harness, not a verdict

Tokens were billed but the visible content came back empty for most probes: the answer went to the model's internal reasoning channel, which our deterministic scorers cannot read. That is a gap in how we call it, not evidence the model is weak, and it is common on reasoning-first models. We say so rather than scoring it zero — a zero would read as "cheap and weak", which we have no basis to claim.

At 1M requests/month (1500 in / 500 out tokens), moving from Alibaba to Baidu saves about $5,590/month.

Illustrative traffic shape, stated so you can check it against your own. Same weights both sides — but confirm quantisation and context below before switching.

Every provider and service tier

Standard on-demand rows first, cheapest of each group first. Tiers are not interchangeable — see the note below the table.

Provider In /1M Out /1M Blended /1M Tier Region Source
Baidu cheapest standard $0.4900 $1.54 $0.7525 standard third_party
StreamLake $0.5600 $1.76 $0.8600 standard third_party
DigitalOcean $0.6300 $1.98 $0.9675 standard third_party
Novita $0.7000 $2.20 $1.07 standard third_party
GMICloud $0.7420 $2.33 $1.14 standard third_party
Decart $0.7200 $2.40 $1.14 standard third_party
Sail Research $0.5000 $3.15 $1.16 standard third_party
DeepInfra $0.7500 $2.40 $1.16 standard third_party
CoreWeave $0.7600 $2.42 $1.18 standard third_party
AkashML $0.7700 $2.42 $1.18 standard third_party
Inceptron $0.7500 $2.90 $1.29 standard third_party
Alibaba $0.9660 $3.04 $1.48 standard third_party
Phala $1.13 $3.00 $1.60 standard third_party
SiliconFlow $1.19 $3.74 $1.83 standard third_party
OpenRouter (default route) *
resells other hosts
$1.19 $3.74 $1.83 standard provider_api
Morph $1.10 $4.10 $1.85 standard third_party
Ambient $1.05 $4.40 $1.89 standard third_party
Wafer $1.26 $3.96 $1.94 standard third_party
AtlasCloud $1.26 $3.96 $1.94 standard third_party
Z.AI $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Fireworks $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Cloudflare $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Friendli $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Parasail $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Venice $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Together $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Crusoe $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
BaseTen $1.40 $4.40 $2.15 standard third_party
Wafer $2.10 $6.60 $3.23 standard third_party
Fireworks $2.10 $6.60 $3.23 standard third_party
Cloudflare $2.10 $6.60 $3.23 standard third_party
BaseTen $2.10 $6.60 $3.23 standard third_party
Alibaba $2.31 $7.26 $3.55 standard third_party
OpenRouter (default route) *
resells other hosts
$1.40 $4.40 $2.15 batch provider_api

Not every row is the same product

This table mixes service tiers, and they are not interchangeable. Rows marked standard are ordinary on-demand requests. The others trade delivery for price:

  • batch — submitted as a batch and collected later, typically within 24 hours — not for interactive use

Every comparison elsewhere on this site uses the standard tier, so a model is never shown at a queued rate beside another model's on-demand rate.

* OpenRouter chooses a host for each request, and the figure above is what its default choice costs — not a fixed rate for this model. Selecting a specific host through the same account costs whatever that host charges, which is why this row can sit above or below the hosts listed beside it. Token rates are passed through from the underlying provider with no markup, so the per-1M price above is what that host charges directly — OpenRouter's own charge sits on funding instead: 5.5% (min $0.80) by Stripe or 5% by Coinbase to buy credits, 5% of the equivalent spend if you bring your own provider key. So budget about 5% above the rate shown unless you already hold credit. Fee schedule.

Compare GLM 5.2 with alternatives

One model per vendor, ordered by how prominent the vendor is and how many independent providers serve the model — hosts only carry what customers ask for, so that is a real demand signal. This is not traffic or popularity data, which we do not have. Every alternative below does the same job — text generation — because a price comparison between a generator and, say, an upscaler is arithmetic rather than advice. Prices on both sides are standard on-demand rates, so the comparison is like for like — a discounted batch or flex rate is never shown against another model’s standard rate.

AlternativeVendor $/1M vs GLM 5.2 QualityKindContextHosts
DeepSeek V3.2 DeepSeek $0.2413
StreamLake
68% cheaper 60/100 reasoning
open weights
164k 16
Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic $2.00
Anthropic
166% dearer 60/100 reasoning 200k 8
GPT-5.4 Nano OpenAI $0.4625
OpenAI
39% cheaper 40/100 reasoning 400k 3
Mistral Small 4 Mistral $0.2625
Mistral
65% cheaper 40/100 reasoning 262k 2
Kimi K2.5 MoonshotAI $0.7875
DigitalOcean
5% dearer 75/100 reasoning
open weights
262k 15
Qwen3 30B A3B Thinking 2507 Alibaba $0.7500
Alibaba
0% cheaper not measured reasoning
open weights
82k 1
MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi $0.5438
Xiaomi
28% cheaper not measured reasoning
open weights
1.05M 7
Nemotron 3 Ultra NVIDIA $0.9250
OpenRouter (default route)
23% dearer not measured reasoning
open weights
1M 4

Prices are the cheapest host for each model, blended at a 3:1 input:output ratio. "Quality" is our own probe suite where we have run it — see what it measures. A cheaper alternative is only a real saving if it also passes on the capability your workload needs.

5 of these alternatives cost less than GLM 5.2 — the cheapest being DeepSeek V3.2 at $0.2413 per 1M tokens blended (68% cheaper).

Cheaper is not automatically better: check the quality column, and confirm the context window and capabilities your workload depends on before switching.

Before you switch

Identical weights do not guarantee identical output. Check that the cheaper host serves the model at full precision rather than a quantised copy, that its context window matches what you need, and that its rate limits carry your peak traffic. A cheaper host that cannot take your throughput is not cheaper — it is an outage.

Move to Baidu without a rewrite

VernaOne fronts every provider on this page with one API, so switching host is a config change — with automatic fallback if quality or latency regresses.

Try VernaOne free →

Frequently asked

How much does GLM 5.2 cost?

The cheapest standard-tier provider is Baidu at $0.7525 per 1M tokens blended (3:1 input:output). The dearest is Alibaba at $3.55 — a 4.7× difference for the same weights. Prices change often; verify with the provider before budgeting.

Which provider is best for GLM 5.2?

Cheapest is not automatically best. Compare quantisation (a lossy copy of the weights changes output), the context window each host actually serves, and rate limits. Where a provider serves less context than the model's native window we flag it in the table above.

Can I switch providers for GLM 5.2 without changing code?

Yes, if you route through an abstraction. VernaOne exposes one API across every provider listed here, so switching host is a config change and you keep automatic fallback if the new one degrades.

← All models · Generated catalog of AI models and every provider that serves them, with normalised prices in USD per 1,000,000 tokens. Blended prices assume a 3:1 input:output ratio.