The Known Good Updated 29 Jul 2026
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Z.ai: GLM 5 ·Moonshot AI vs Z.ai

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Z.ai: GLM 5 — head-to-head comparison

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile Z.ai: GLM 5 profile All comparisons
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — Moonshot AI
Quality
#7 of 62
93based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#122 of 317
58.8
Output tokens per second
Price
#225 of 370
$1.16
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.65 · Out $2.72
Cache hit price
#119 of 238
$0.11
per 1M tokens (−83%)
Context
#199 of 375
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Z.ai: GLM 5 — Z.ai
Quality
#20 of 62
77based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#215 of 317
36.4
Output tokens per second
Price
#232 of 370
$1.35
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.95 · Out $2.55
Cache hit price
#167 of 238
$0.20
per 1M tokens (−79%)
Context
#216 of 375
205k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 93 and Z.ai: GLM 5 scores 77 — a 16-point lead for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. They share 3 published evaluations, with MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ahead on 3 and Z.ai: GLM 5 ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $1.16 per 1M tokens for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and $1.35 for Z.ai: GLM 5 — MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is about 1.2× cheaper.

Throughput is 59 tokens per second for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and 36 for Z.ai: GLM 5, with time to first token at 1.4s and 2.4s. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 accepts 262k tokens of context against 205k.

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); Z.ai: GLM 5 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 25 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 11 serve both.

Generated from tracked data on 29 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 93 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 77 based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.35
Output tok/s 59 36
Context window 262k 205k
Providers 22 14
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 93 77
Coding Index 67
Mathematics Index 96 80
Agentic Index 87 67
Openness Index 60 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 · marker = Z.ai: GLM 5 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond91 / 88
Mock AIME 2024–2596 / 80
SWE-bench Verified77 / 72

Right-hand figures read MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 / Z.ai: GLM 5. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 leads on 3 of 3, Z.ai: GLM 5 on 0.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Text Arena 1,455 1,445
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,461 1,457
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Input $/1M $0.65 $0.95
Output $/1M $2.72 $2.55
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.35
Cache read $/1M $0.109 $0.200
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Context window 262k 205k
Max output tokens 262k 131k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Output tokens/s 59 36
Time to first token 1.4s 2.4s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

25 hosts · 11 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5 tok/s
Together $2.02 138
CoreWeave $1.34 135
Parasail $1.44 128 $1.55 40
BaseTen $1.71 127
Fireworks $1.71 86
Decart $1.34 76
ModelRun $1.38 76
Cloudflare $1.71 56
Inceptron $1.30 52
DigitalOcean $1.37 51 $1.16 8
Crusoe $1.40 50
Phala $1.97 42 $1.77
Baidu · first party $1.16 42 $1.08 31
Chutes $1.37 42 $1.35 38
DeepInfra $1.44 38 $0.97 46
Venice $1.44 36 $1.55 38
AtlasCloud $1.71 34 $1.50 37
SiliconFlow $1.43 34 $1.35 27
Novita $1.45 31 $1.55 28
StreamLake $1.54 31 $0.93 36
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 23
Sail Research $1.75 6
Amazon Bedrock · first party $1.55 96
GMICloud $0.93 35
Z.AI · first party $1.55 31

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →