The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Z.ai: GLM 5.1 ·Moonshot AI vs Z.ai

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Z.ai: GLM 5.1 — head-to-head comparison

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile Z.ai: GLM 5.1 profile All comparisons
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — Moonshot AI
Quality
#7 of 61
93based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#112 of 316
65.7
Output tokens per second
Price
#211 of 340
$1.16
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.65 · Out $2.72
Cache hit price
#99 of 206
$0.11
per 1M tokens (−83%)
Context
#172 of 345
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Z.ai: GLM 5.1 — Z.ai
Quality
#12 of 61
88based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#154 of 316
53.4
Output tokens per second
Price
#221 of 340
$1.48
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.97 · Out $3.04
Cache hit price
#136 of 206
$0.18
per 1M tokens (−81%)
Context
#195 of 345
205k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 93 and Z.ai: GLM 5.1 scores 88 — a 5-point lead for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. They share 3 published evaluations, with MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ahead on 3 and Z.ai: GLM 5.1 ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $1.16 per 1M tokens for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and $1.48 for Z.ai: GLM 5.1 — MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is about 1.3× cheaper.

Throughput is 66 tokens per second for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and 53 for Z.ai: GLM 5.1, with time to first token at 1.1s and 1.9s. 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 5.1 is proprietary. 26 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 14 serve both.

Generated from tracked data on 25 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5.1
Known Good Index 93 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 88 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.48
Output tok/s 66 53
Context window 262k 205k
Providers 21 19
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

IndicesComponents
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 5.1
Known Good Index 93 88
Mathematics Index 96 92
Science Index 95 89
Agentic Index 87 82
Openness Index 60 5
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 5.1 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond91 / 85
MATH / AIME96 / 92
SWE-bench Verified77 / 74

Right-hand figures read MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 / Z.ai: GLM 5.1. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 leads on 3 of 3, Z.ai: GLM 5.1 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 5.1
Text Arena 1,455 1,465
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,461 1,470
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Per token typeCache discount
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 5.1
Input $/1M $0.65 $0.97
Output $/1M $2.72 $3.04
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.48
Cache read $/1M $0.109 $0.179
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 5.1
Context window 262k 205k
Max output tokens 262k 128k
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 5.1
Output tokens/s 66 53
Time to first token 1.1s 1.9s
The Known Good

Providers

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

26 hosts · 14 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5.1 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5.1 tok/s
CoreWeave $1.34 156 $2.15 120
Together $2.02 130
Decart $1.35 123
Fireworks $1.71 111 $2.15 90
ModelRun $1.38 99
Crusoe $1.40 69 $2.00 91
DeepInfra $1.44 57 $1.66 66
Cloudflare $1.71 56
Venice $1.44 54 $2.37 80
DigitalOcean $1.37 53 $1.81 21
SiliconFlow $1.43 50 $1.83 62
Chutes $1.37 49 $1.50 48
AtlasCloud $1.71 44 $1.94 42
StreamLake $1.54 44 $1.48 25
Novita $1.45 43 $2.13 52
Parasail $1.44 42 $2.15 71
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 40
Inceptron $1.30 39
Baidu · first party $1.16 32 $1.50 51
BaseTen $1.71
Phala $1.97 $1.96
Friendli $2.15 109
GMICloud $1.50 77
Wafer $1.55 50
Z.AI · first party $2.15 37
Nebius $2.15 26

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 →