The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs Z.ai: GLM 5.2 ·OpenAI vs Z.ai

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs Z.ai: GLM 5.2 — head-to-head comparison

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 profile Z.ai: GLM 5.2 profile All comparisons
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 — OpenAI
Quality
#49 of 61
36based on 4 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#236 of 316
33.2
Output tokens per second
Price
#268 of 340
$3.50
Blended per 1M tokens
In $2.00 · Out $8.00
Cache hit price
#174 of 206
$0.50
per 1M tokens (−75%)
Context
#49 of 345
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Z.ai: GLM 5.2 — Z.ai
Quality
#8 of 61
91based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#147 of 316
55.2
Output tokens per second
Price
#204 of 340
$1.07
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.70 · Out $2.20
Cache hit price
#115 of 206
$0.13
per 1M tokens (−81%)
Context
#45 of 345
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, OpenAI: GPT-4.1 scores 36 and Z.ai: GLM 5.2 scores 91 — a 55-point lead for Z.ai: GLM 5.2. They share 3 published evaluations, with OpenAI: GPT-4.1 ahead on 0 and Z.ai: GLM 5.2 ahead on 3.

Blended pricing is $3.50 per 1M tokens for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and $1.07 for Z.ai: GLM 5.2 — Z.ai: GLM 5.2 is about 3.3× cheaper.

Throughput is 33 tokens per second for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and 55 for Z.ai: GLM 5.2, with time to first token at 0.8s and 1.7s. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 accepts 1.05M tokens of context against 1.05M.

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 is proprietary; Z.ai: GLM 5.2 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 31 tracked hosts serve one or both.

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

At a glance
MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.2
Known Good Index 36 based on 4 of 6 evaluations 91 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $3.50 $1.07
Output tok/s 33 55
Context window 1.05M 1.05M
Providers 2 29
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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.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.2
Known Good Index 36 91
Mathematics Index 61 86
Science Index 66 97
Reasoning Index 36
Agentic Index 33 91
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 5.2 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond67 / 92
MATH / AIME38 / 86
SWE-bench Verified49 / 79

Right-hand figures read OpenAI: GPT-4.1 / Z.ai: GLM 5.2. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 leads on 0 of 3, Z.ai: GLM 5.2 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 5.2
Text Arena 1,464
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,469
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.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.2
Input $/1M $2.00 $0.70
Output $/1M $8.00 $2.20
Blended $/1M $3.50 $1.07
Cache read $/1M $0.500 $0.130
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 5.2
Context window 1.05M 1.05M
Max output tokens 33k 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.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1Z.ai: GLM 5.2
Output tokens/s 33 55
Time to first token 0.8s 1.7s
The Known Good

Providers

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

31 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider OpenAI: GPT-4.1 blendedOpenAI: GPT-4.1 tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5.2 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5.2 tok/s
OpenAI · first party $3.50 59
Azure · first party $3.50 42
Friendli $2.15 124
Fireworks $2.15 123
BaseTen $2.15 120
Ionstream $2.15 108
Wafer $2.15 108
Cloudflare $2.15 84
Ambient $1.89 78
Decart $1.52 71
DeepInfra $1.45 68
Alibaba · first party $1.27 65
Together $2.15 62
Chutes $1.93 57
Venice $2.15 56
Morph $1.85 52
GMICloud $1.42 50
CoreWeave $1.18 49
SiliconFlow $2.00 49
Z.AI · first party $2.15 49
Phala $2.15 48
Parasail $2.15 45
StreamLake $1.07 45
Baidu · first party $1.12 42
Novita $1.07 39
AtlasCloud $1.94 34
Inceptron $1.43 34
AkashML $1.18 33
Io Net $4.40 28
Sail Research $1.72 27
DigitalOcean $1.89 23

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 →