THE TICKER · Z.AI · CHECKED DAILY · LAST CHANGE 2026-10-13
GLM 5.3 API PRICING
What Z.ai charges for GLM 5.3, in USD, cross-checked daily against the public pricing dataset. Effective price — if there's a promo running, this is the promo.
WHAT THINGS ACTUALLY COST ON GLM 5.3
| Scenario | Tokens in / out | 1 run | 1,000 runs |
|---|---|---|---|
| A typical prompt (300 tokens in) | 300 / ~900 | $0.0044 | $4.38 |
| A 20-turn conversation (context re-sent) | 4,000 / ~4,000 | $0.02 | $23.20 |
| Summarizing a 10-page document | 8,000 / ~3,200 | $0.03 | $25.28 |
| One agent run (tools, retries, thinking) | 2,000 / ~12,000 | $0.06 | $55.60 |
| A code review request | 1,500 / ~3,750 | $0.02 | $18.60 |
Output sizes assume the same editorial ratios as the Burn Calculator (3x for prompts, 6x for agent runs). Estimates, not invoices.
VS. THE REST OF THE BOARD
“Same job” = a 1,000-token prompt with a 3,000-token reply, priced on both models. Cheaper is not always better. It is, however, always cheaper.
PRICE HISTORY
GLM 5.3 joins the board at $1.40 in / $4.40 out per MTok — the first Chinese open models we track, after a board that covered 38% of the traffic it claims to index.
Source: docs.z.ai/guides/overview/pricing · price last confirmed against the daily source on 2026-10-14. The full changelog lives at /pricing/changes.
NOW FIND OUT HOW MUCH OF THAT IS WASTE
GLM 5.3's price is fixed. Your token count isn't. Paste a real prompt into the Burn Calculator and see what it costs on GLM 5.3 — and how much a leaner version would save at 1,000 runs. Or pull the whole board from the ticker.