GLM pricing — GLM-5.2 vs GLM-5-Turbo

← index | → cost-model | → deepseek-pricing

What this is

Per-token pricing and capability reference for z.ai’s GLM-5 series models as shipped via the GLM Coding Plan (same plan that backs zread MCP). Covers GLM-5.2 (flagship) and GLM-5-Turbo (speed variant). The table below is the single source of truth for cost prediction when routing tasks to ZAI models.

Not to be confused with the DeepSeek pricing page — different provider, different pricing model (no peak-valley mechanism here).

Pricing table

All prices in USD per 1M tokens. No cache-hit discount (z.ai does not expose per-request cache-hit/miss splits in the same way DeepSeek does).

GLM-5.2

Role	Flagship reasoning model, 753B total / 40B active MoE
Context window	1M tokens
Speed	173 tok/s, TTFT 1.47s
Input	$1.40
Output	$4.40

GLM-5-Turbo

Role	Speed/cost-optimized variant of the GLM-5 family
Context window	200k tokens
Speed	Faster (quantitative figure pending from z.ai docs)
Input	$1.20
Output	$4.00

The real tradeoff: context + depth, not price

Turbo is only ~9–14% cheaper per token than 5.2. The decision between them is driven by:

Criterion	Pick GLM-5.2	Pick GLM-5-Turbo
Context length	Need 200k–1M tokens	Under 200k is fine
Task complexity	Deep multi-step SWE	Routine coding / chat
Agent mode	long-horizon agents	Interactive loops, high QPS
Latency budget	Tolerant (1.47s TTFT)	Need snappier response
Cost sensitivity	Secondary concern	Marginal savings (~9–14%)

For Colibri’s cost-mode routing, the meaningful comparison is not turbo vs 5.2 — it’s either GLM vs DeepSeek. DeepSeek V4 Pro at cache-hit prices ($0.0036/M input) is ~390× cheaper than GLM-5.2 input ($1.40/M). GLM’s pull is the 1M context window and the ZCode harness, not the token price.

ZCode

Z.ai’s official coding harness for GLM-5.2, shipped Jun 2026 (current: 3.x). Persistent workspace, multi-agent, long-running tasks — positioned against Claude Code / Cursor / Copilot. Free client; revenue via the GLM Coding Plan ($16.20 Lite → $144 Max). The same plan that provides ZAI_API_KEY for pi --provider zai.

ZCode is relevant to the PI_TUI_PROVIDER=zai lane as the upstream harness target — the model GLM-5.2 is ZCode’s official recommended model.

Where this lives in code

• Colibri daemon: PI_TUI_PROVIDER=zai / PI_TUI_MODEL=GLM-5.1 set in build.cfg and propagated via the seed partition. Autospawned zot agents use this for the z.ai JSONL transport path. → build.cfg, live/operator-session/seed/build.cfg
• Clawdie-iso: doc/LLM-PROVIDER-HARNESS.md — matrix of provider/harness verify status; glm-5-turbo documented for Aider lane via LiteLLM. → doc/LLM-PROVIDER-HARNESS.md
• Skills: .agent/skills/coding-agent/SKILL.md and .agent/skills/ollama/SKILL.md reference GLM-5.1 as current production model.
• zread MCP: z.ai repo comprehension tool (search_doc, get_repo_structure, read_file). Uses the same GLM Coding Plan key. Config at ~/.config/zread/zread.env on domedog.

See also

• cost-model — byte-stable prefixes and cache-hit metering
• deepseek-pricing — DeepSeek V4 peak-valley pricing (the cheaper option for most workloads)
• hive-routing — cost-aware task routing across providers

Sources

Figures verified against public sources 02.jul.2026:

• BenchLM — GLM-5.2 vs GLM-5-Turbo
• Artificial Analysis — GLM-5.2
• OpenRouter — GLM-5 vs GLM-5-Turbo
• ZCode official site
• VentureBeat — Z.ai launches ZCode
• South China Morning Post — Zhipu releases GLM-5.2 harness