The Known Good Updated 2 Sep 2026 Subscribe
Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B vs Z.ai: GLM 5 ·Alibaba vs Z.ai

Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B vs Z.ai: GLM 5 — head-to-head comparison

Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B profile Z.ai: GLM 5 profile All comparisons
Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B — Alibaba
Quality
#37 of 65
66based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#88 of 339
74.3
Output tokens per second
Price
#109 of 439
$0.30
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.10 · Out $0.90
Cache hit price
#106 of 322
$0.050
per 1M tokens (−50%)
Context
#199 of 473
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Z.ai: GLM 5 — Z.ai
Quality
#21 of 65
78based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#181 of 339
46.1
Output tokens per second
Price
#225 of 439
$0.93
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.60 · Out $1.92
Cache hit price
#173 of 322
$0.12
per 1M tokens (−80%)
Context
#287 of 473
205k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B scores 66 and Z.ai: GLM 5 scores 78 — a 12-point lead for Z.ai: GLM 5. They share 3 published evaluations, with Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B ahead on 1 and Z.ai: GLM 5 ahead on 2.

Blended pricing is $0.30 per 1M tokens for Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B and $0.93 for Z.ai: GLM 5 — Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B is about 3.1× cheaper.

Throughput is 74 tokens per second for Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B and 46 for Z.ai: GLM 5, with time to first token at 1.5s and 1.8s. Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B accepts 262k tokens of context against 205k.

Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); Z.ai: GLM 5 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 18 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 6 serve both.

Generated from tracked data on 3 Sep 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3BZ.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 66 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 78 based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.30 $0.93
Output tok/s 74 46
Context window 262k 205k
Providers 10 14
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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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3BZ.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 66 78
Coding Index 69
Openness Index 60 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B · marker = Z.ai: GLM 5 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond84 / 88
Mock AIME 2024–2587 / 80
Terminal-Bench23 / 52

Right-hand figures read Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B / Z.ai: GLM 5. Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B leads on 1 of 3, Z.ai: GLM 5 on 2.

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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3BZ.ai: GLM 5
Text Arena 1,446
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,458
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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3BZ.ai: GLM 5
Input $/1M $0.10 $0.60
Output $/1M $0.90 $1.92
Blended $/1M $0.30 $0.93
Cache read $/1M $0.050 $0.120
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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3BZ.ai: GLM 5
Context window 262k 205k
Max output tokens 236k 128k
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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3BZ.ai: GLM 5
Output tokens/s 74 46
Time to first token 1.5s 1.8s
The Known Good

Providers

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

18 hosts · 6 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5 tok/s
CoreWeave $0.50 137
Phala $0.47 90 $1.77
Io Net $0.44 85
AkashML $0.30 74
AtlasCloud $0.42 58 $1.50 35
Parasail $0.36 55 $1.55
Venice $0.33 52 $1.55 30
SiliconFlow $0.55 51 $1.35 39
Darkbloom $0.21 50
DeepInfra $0.31 25 $0.97 30
Amazon Bedrock · first party $1.55 98
Z.AI · first party $1.55 52
Novita $1.55 51
Baidu · first party $1.08 48
Chutes $1.35 45
GMICloud $0.93 40
StreamLake $0.93 36
DigitalOcean $1.55 8

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 →