GLM-5.3 vs Qwen3.8 Max

At a glance

• Capability index

  • GLM-5.3155.6
  • Qwen3.8 Max156.4

  Qwen3.8 Max is 0.8 points higher.

• Price per 1M tokens

  • GLM-5.3$2.15
  • Qwen3.8 Max$3.00

  GLM-5.3 is 28% cheaper.

• Context window

  • GLM-5.31M tokens
  • Qwen3.8 Max1M tokens

  They take in about the same.

• Released

  • GLM-5.3Aug 14, 2026
  • Qwen3.8 MaxAug 3, 2026

  GLM-5.3 is 11 days newer.

Where each scores higher

On the 22 tests both have taken, each on its own scale. A gap of a point or two can sit within a test’s margin of error.

Level on Arena hard prompts.

1 more test has results for only one of them; the table below lists every result.

Everything side by side

Comparison of GLM-5.3 vs Qwen3.8 Max

Measure	GLM-5.3Z.ai	Qwen3.8 MaxAlibaba
Model
Maker	Z.ai	Alibaba
Sold here by	Z.AI	Alibaba
API model ID	glm-5.3	qwen3.8-max
Released	Aug 14, 2026	Aug 3, 2026
Knowledge cutoff	Not reported	Not reported
Weights	Open: downloadable	Closed: hosted access only
Developer’s country	China	China
Hosts selling it	75including Z.ai directly	36including Alibaba directly
Test results
Capability index	155.6#27 of 274	156.4 (best of these models)#22 of 274
LiveBench overall	76.1%#32 of 66	78.5% (best of these models)#17 of 66
Arena text	1479#27 of 413	1482 (best of these models)#23 of 413
LiveBench coding	79.0% (best of these models)#26 of 66	72.9%#52 of 66
Arena WebDev	1623#20 of 138	1671 (best of these models)#10 of 138
Arena coding	1521#34 of 408	1524 (best of these models)#28 of 408
LiveBench mathematics	87.9%#43 of 66	91.3% (best of these models)#27 of 66
Mock AIME 2024–2025	91.1%#65 of 297	99.4% (best of these models)#14 of 297
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3	68.8%#25 of 114	74.7% (best of these models)#18 of 114
FrontierMath Tier 4	29.3%#36 of 70	46.3% (best of these models)#25 of 70
Arena math	1494#20 of 396	1498 (best of these models)#18 of 396
SimpleQA Verified	41.0%#44 of 86	45.8% (best of these models)#37 of 86
LiveBench agentic coding	60.9%#15 of 66	64.7% (best of these models)#7 of 66
DeepSWE	69.0% (best of these models)#16 of 69	57.5%#36 of 69
CursorBench	42.6%#20 of 62	Not tested
LiveBench language	79.9% (best of these models)#31 of 66	79.7%#34 of 66
LiveBench instructions	69.3%#33 of 66	74.1% (best of these models)#13 of 66
Arena creative writing	1454#34 of 411	1468 (best of these models)#20 of 411
Arena instruction following	1476 (best of these models)#25 of 413	1474#31 of 413
LiveBench data analysis	70.2%#51 of 66	78.4% (best of these models)#24 of 66
LiveBench reasoning	85.8%#35 of 66	88.2% (best of these models)#23 of 66
GPQA Diamond	90.9%#34 of 319	92.7% (best of these models)#24 of 319
Chess puzzles	21.0%#80 of 227	29.0% (best of these models)#54 of 227
Arena hard prompts	1503#25 of 413	1503#27 of 413
Price per million tokens
Input	$1.40 (best of these models)	$2.00
Output	$4.40 (best of these models)	$6.00
Blended, 3 input to 1 output	$2.15 (best of these models)	$3.00
Cached input	$0.26	$0.25 (best of these models)
Writing to the cache	Free (best of these models)	$2.50
The maker’s own price	This listing	This listing
Limits
Context window	1M tokens	1M tokens
Max input	1M tokens (best of these models)	991K tokens
Max output	131.1K tokens	131.1K tokens
Features
Reads	text	images, PDFs, text and video
Produces	text	text
Reasoning	Yeseffort low, high, max; can be switched off; thinking budget can be set	Yeseffort low, medium, xhigh; can be switched off; thinking budget can be set
Tool calling	Yes	Yes
Structured output	Yes, such as JSON	Yes, such as JSON
File attachments	No	Yes
Temperature setting	Supported	Supported

Bold marks the better value in each row. Prices are each model’s own list price, or the middle price across hosts when the maker does not sell it, blended as three input tokens for every output token. Test results as published by LiveBench (Apache-2.0), Epoch AI (CC BY 4.0), Datacurve DeepSWE, compiled by Epoch AI (CC BY 4.0), Cursor CursorBench, compiled by Epoch AI (CC BY 4.0), Arena (CC BY 4.0); model details and prices from models.dev (MIT). Confirm pricing with the provider before use.