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GLM-5.3 API Pricing & Cost Calculator

GLM-5.3 keeps GLM-5.2's pricing while improving quality. $4.40/M output with a real 1M context window is the value pick for high-volume document and agentic work against Gemini Flash or GPT-5.6 Terra.

GLM-5.3 is Z.ai's August 2026 flagship refresh, adding better long-context reasoning at the exact same $1.40/$4.40 price point as GLM-5.2, with the 1M context window retained.

By TechCompare · Updated

Input tokens
100,000
per request
Output tokens
5,000
per request
Volume
100 / monthly
Standard API

Calculator

Cost Comparison

Based on 100,000 input tokens (50% cached), 5,000 output tokens, and 100 requests.Prices are fetched live from OpenRouter and may include temporary promotional discounts not accounted for in our article and comparison figures.

Same 100,000 in / 5,000 out (50% cached) scenario, pre-loaded. Adjust tokens, caching, or swap models.
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How this is calculated

GLM-5.3 is priced at $1.40 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens on Z.ai's official list, with an ~81% prompt caching discount ($0.26 per million cached reads). There is no published batch discount. That repeats GLM-5.2's rate card exactly and keeps it below Gemini 3.6 Flash's standard $1.50/$7.50 on both rows.

Verdict

The headline $1.40/M input and $4.40/M output with cached reads at $0.26/M matches GLM-5.2 dollar for dollar, so the 5.3 upgrade is a no-cost quality bump for existing GLM workloads. Against Gemini 3.7 Flash's promotional $0.75/$3.75, GLM-5.3 loses on output until the Google promo sunsets at the end of 2026 and lands back at $1.50/$7.50. The 1M context without chunking overhead remains the structural advantage over any model that bills by re-read or retrieval round-trip.

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Related guides

glm 5 3 755b VRAM estimate
VRAM footprint for the glm 5 3 755b model this pricing entry is for.
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Context window explained
How a model context window caps prompt size.
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Frequently asked questions

Is GLM-5.3 priced differently from GLM-5.2?
No. Both are $1.40 per million input, $4.40 per million output, with the same ~81% cache discount ($0.26/M cached reads) and no batch discount. The upgrade from 5.2 to 5.3 is free.
How does GLM-5.3 compare to Gemini 3.7 Flash on price?
Gemini 3.7 Flash is currently on promo at $0.75/$3.75 through December 2026, cheaper than GLM-5.3's $1.40/$4.40. After the promo ends and Flash reverts to $1.50/$7.50, GLM-5.3 wins on both rows. GLM also has the deeper production cache discount story at 81% vs Flash's 90% - Flash still wins on cached input ($0.075/M vs $0.26/M) for stable-prompt loops.
What is the real monthly cost at 50M input and 5M output tokens?
At standard rates with no caching: 50 * $1.40 + 5 * $4.40 = $92. With 50% cache hit rate on input it drops to 50 * $0.83 = $41.50 + $22 = $63.50. Batch discounts aren't published for GLM-5.3, so latency-insensitive workloads should compare against Gemini 3.7 Flash's 50% batch tier.

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