I might be missing something but when I went to their site they are more expensive than Claude. Why would I pick GLM over Claude? Is it they just offer more tokens in their plans?

▲ gpugreg 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

    > Why would I pick GLM over Claude?

To support the company that makes their model weights available for download, while Anthropic lobbies to restrict access.

▲ Bawoosette 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What are you referring to? Given the audience, my instinct is to assume "plan" refers to the GLM Coding Plans, which are all cheaper than their Anthropic counterparts. As far as I can tell, the API costs are also all cheaper than their roughly equivalently capable Anthropic models.

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menaerus 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Anthropic: 17 USD (pro), 100 USD (max)

GLM: 80 USD (pro), 168 USD (max) -> with "limited-time event" discount this becomes 56 USD and 117.6 USD

I also don't understand why are they so much costlier, and I would also like to give it a try.

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Bawoosette 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The $17 figure is Anthropic's monthly cost if purchased annually. I'll use monthly numbers.

Anthropic's Pro is $20 and corresponds to Z.ai's Lite at $18

Anthropic's 5x Max is $100 and corresponds to Z.ai's Pro at $80

Anthropic's 20x Max is $200 and corresponds to Z.ai's Max at $168

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reacharavindh 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Not to digress from the core argument of Claude vs GLM being open weights….

I have both plans. Claude monthly €20 and Z’s €18 monthly. Running GLM-5.3 high on their monthly plan will hit quotas absurdly fast compared to Opus 5 High on Claude code. It’s almost unusable for AI driven development. I ended up using the Z plan for using GLM-5.3 as a detailed security reviewer and adversarial feedback. For that, it is much better than Opus which will flag and bail out for even simple security tasks that are aimed at defense.

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SSLy 3 hours ago | parent [-]

on the 18€ plan they really want people to use Flash and skip the bigger thing.

	▲	reacharavindh 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Perhaps.. But, it was enough for a customer like me who tried them at good faith to walk away and find their competitors.. I like the diversity of LLMs as of today and prefer to not tie myself to one big plan with any vendor. If they don’t prefer me as a customer, then I will accept that, and move away.

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alexjplant 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just use GLM-5.3 Flash via OpenRouter. It's dirt cheap especially relative to how capable it is. While the Z.ai coding plan was a decent deal in the past I always ran into limiting with it and since I use it intermittently for personal projects my usage wasn't always enough to make the math work - the a la carte pricing via OpenRouter makes this a non-issue.

There's also a new free stealth model available that's more likely than not in the GLM family. This seems to happen every few months for a week or two and represents a good savings opportunity.

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ipsod 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Anthropic: 17 USD (pro), 100 USD (max) GLM: 80 USD (pro), 168 USD (max) -> with "limited-time event" discount this is 56 USD and 117.6 USD

GLM's "Max" plan is (was?) equivalent to 3x Claude's 20x ($200) plan.

▲ auspiv 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And exactly how many tokens (please do the breakdown for prefill vs decode) does a Claude $20/month plan include?

▲ SSLy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

because GLM does what Clauden't

▲ tokai 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For one you would have to use Claude if you pick it. But seriously there is no way for you to determine if one is a better offer than the other, when the usage/tokens/credits are vague, detached, and won't tell you much without trying both.