The Known Good Updated 29 Jul 2026
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs Z.ai: GLM 5 ·Alibaba vs Z.ai

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs Z.ai: GLM 5 — head-to-head comparison

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview profile Z.ai: GLM 5 profile All comparisons
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — Alibaba
Quality
#9 of 62
90based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#161 of 317
47.9
Output tokens per second
Price
#265 of 370
$2.34
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.04 · Out $6.24
Cache hit price
#136 of 238
$0.13
per 1M tokens (−88%)
Context
#158 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, Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores 90 and Z.ai: GLM 5 scores 77 — a 14-point lead for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview. They share 3 published evaluations, with Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview ahead on 3 and Z.ai: GLM 5 ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $2.34 per 1M tokens for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview and $1.35 for Z.ai: GLM 5 — Z.ai: GLM 5 is about 1.7× cheaper.

Throughput is 48 tokens per second for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview and 36 for Z.ai: GLM 5, with time to first token at 1.6s and 2.4s. Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview accepts 262k tokens of context against 205k.

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview is proprietary; Z.ai: GLM 5 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 15 tracked hosts serve one or both.

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

At a glance
MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 90 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 77 based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $2.34 $1.35
Output tok/s 48 36
Context window 262k 205k
Providers 1 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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 90 77
Coding Index 67
Mathematics Index 91 80
Agentic Index 87 67
Openness Index 5 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview · marker = Z.ai: GLM 5 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond89 / 88
Mock AIME 2024–2591 / 80
SWE-bench Verified77 / 72

Right-hand figures read Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview / Z.ai: GLM 5. Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview 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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Text Arena 1,456 1,445
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,460 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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Input $/1M $1.04 $0.95
Output $/1M $6.24 $2.55
Blended $/1M $2.34 $1.35
Cache read $/1M $0.130 $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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Context window 262k 205k
Max output tokens 66k 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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Output tokens/s 48 36
Time to first token 1.6s 2.4s
The Known Good

Providers

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

15 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5 tok/s
Alibaba · first party $2.34 38
Amazon Bedrock · first party $1.55 96
DeepInfra $0.97 46
Parasail $1.55 40
Chutes $1.35 38
Venice $1.55 38
AtlasCloud $1.50 37
StreamLake $0.93 36
GMICloud $0.93 35
Baidu · first party $1.08 31
Z.AI · first party $1.55 31
Novita $1.55 28
SiliconFlow $1.35 27
DigitalOcean $1.16 8
Phala $1.77

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 →