The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Z.ai: GLM 5 ·Moonshot AI vs Z.ai

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Z.ai: GLM 5 — head-to-head comparison

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile Z.ai: GLM 5 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 — Z.ai
Quality
#19 of 61
77based on 4 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#214 of 316
37.3
Output tokens per second
Price
#217 of 340
$1.35
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.95 · Out $2.55
Cache hit price
#138 of 206
$0.20
per 1M tokens (−79%)
Context
#189 of 345
205k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 93 and Z.ai: GLM 5 scores 77 — a 16-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 ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $1.16 per 1M tokens for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and $1.35 for Z.ai: GLM 5 — MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is about 1.2× cheaper.

Throughput is 66 tokens per second for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and 37 for Z.ai: GLM 5, with time to first token at 1.1s and 2.5s. 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 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 24 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 11 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
Known Good Index 93 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 77 based on 4 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.35
Output tok/s 66 37
Context window 262k 205k
Providers 21 14
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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
Known Good Index 93 77
Coding Index 67
Mathematics Index 96 80
Science Index 95 92
Agentic Index 87 67
Openness Index 60 60
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 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond91 / 88
MATH / AIME96 / 80
SWE-bench Verified77 / 72

Right-hand figures read MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 / Z.ai: GLM 5. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Text Arena 1,455 1,445
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,461 1,457
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
Input $/1M $0.65 $0.95
Output $/1M $2.72 $2.55
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.35
Cache read $/1M $0.109 $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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Context window 262k 205k
Max output tokens 262k 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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Z.ai: GLM 5
Output tokens/s 66 37
Time to first token 1.1s 2.5s
The Known Good

Providers

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

24 hosts · 11 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5 tok/s
CoreWeave $1.34 156
Together $2.02 130
Decart $1.35 123
Fireworks $1.71 111
ModelRun $1.38 99
Crusoe $1.40 69
DeepInfra $1.44 57 $0.97 29
Cloudflare $1.71 56
Venice $1.44 54 $1.55 32
DigitalOcean $1.37 53 $1.16 8
SiliconFlow $1.43 50 $1.35 29
Chutes $1.37 49 $1.35 48
AtlasCloud $1.71 44 $1.50 26
StreamLake $1.54 44 $0.93 35
Novita $1.45 43 $1.55 36
Parasail $1.44 42 $1.55 42
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 40
Inceptron $1.30 39
Baidu · first party $1.16 32 $1.08 43
BaseTen $1.71
Phala $1.97 $1.77 38
Amazon Bedrock · first party $1.55 109
GMICloud $0.93 69
Z.AI · first party $1.55 33

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 →