The Known Good Updated 25 Oct 2026 Subscribe
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs Z.ai: GLM 5.1 ·OpenAI vs Z.ai

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs Z.ai: GLM 5.1 — head-to-head comparison

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 profile Z.ai: GLM 5.1 profile All comparisons
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 — OpenAI
Quality
#50 of 65
45based on 5 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#87 of 345
102.2
Output tokens per second
Price
#413 of 526
$3.50
Blended per 1M tokens
In $2.00 · Out $8.00
Cache hit price
#385 of 412
$0.50
per 1M tokens (−75%)
Context
#138 of 575
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Z.ai: GLM 5.1 — Z.ai
Quality
#10 of 65
89based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#242 of 345
52.0
Output tokens per second
Price
#370 of 526
$2.15
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.40 · Out $4.40
Cache hit price
#346 of 412
$0.26
per 1M tokens (−81%)
Context
#378 of 575
205k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, OpenAI: GPT-4.1 scores 45 and Z.ai: GLM 5.1 scores 89 — a 44-point lead for Z.ai: GLM 5.1. They share 3 published evaluations, with OpenAI: GPT-4.1 ahead on 0 and Z.ai: GLM 5.1 ahead on 3.

Blended pricing is $3.50 per 1M tokens for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and $2.15 for Z.ai: GLM 5.1 — Z.ai: GLM 5.1 is about 1.6× cheaper.

Throughput is 102 tokens per second for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and 52 for Z.ai: GLM 5.1, with time to first token at 1.0s and 2.3s. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 accepts 1.05M tokens of context against 205k.

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 is proprietary; Z.ai: GLM 5.1 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 22 tracked hosts serve one or both.

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

At a glance
MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.1
Known Good Index 45 based on 5 of 7 evaluations 89 based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $3.50 $2.15
Output tok/s 102 52
Context window 1.05M 205k
Providers 2 20
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.1
Known Good Index 45 89
Mathematics Index 61 —
Reasoning Index 36 —
Openness Index 5 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = OpenAI: GPT-4.1 · marker = Z.ai: GLM 5.1 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond67 / 90
Mock AIME 2024–2538 / 93
SWE-bench Verified49 / 74

Right-hand figures read OpenAI: GPT-4.1 / Z.ai: GLM 5.1. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 leads on 0 of 3, Z.ai: GLM 5.1 on 3.

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.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.1
Text Arena 1,383 1,463
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,415 1,465
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

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.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.1
Input $/1M $2.00 $1.40
Output $/1M $8.00 $4.40
Blended $/1M $3.50 $2.15
Cache read $/1M $0.500 $0.260
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.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.1
Context window 1.05M 205k
Max output tokens 33k 131k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Mean throughput and time to first token across hosting providers, over successful measurements from the last 48 hours

Throughput and latency

Means across all tracked providers over successful measurements from the last 48 hours, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.1
Output tokens/s 102 52
Time to first token 1.0s 2.3s
The Known Good

Providers

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

22 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider OpenAI: GPT-4.1 blendedOpenAI: GPT-4.1 tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5.1 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5.1 tok/s
OpenAI · first party $3.50 83 — —
Azure · first party $3.50 82 — —
Friendli — — $2.15 125
CoreWeave — — $2.15 79
Crusoe — — $2.00 74
GMICloud — — $2.15 71
Alibaba · first party — — $2.04 64
AtlasCloud — — $1.94 62
Baidu · first party — — $1.48 61
Wafer — — $1.55 60
SiliconFlow — — $1.83 57
Venice — — $2.15 52
Nebius — — $2.15 41
Phala — — $1.96 35
DeepInfra — — $1.66 34
Novita — — $2.13 32
Chutes — — $1.50 32
StreamLake — — $1.48 30
Z.AI · first party — — $2.15 24
DigitalOcean — — $2.05 12
Fireworks — — $2.15 —
Parasail — — $2.15 —

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 →