The Known Good Updated 4 Sep 2026 Subscribe
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs Z.ai: GLM 5 ·Alibaba vs Z.ai

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs Z.ai: GLM 5 — head-to-head comparison

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview profile Z.ai: GLM 5 profile All comparisons
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — Alibaba
Quality
#12 of 65
89based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#176 of 338
46.4
Output tokens per second
Price
#323 of 442
$2.31
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.03 · Out $6.16
Cache hit price
#187 of 324
$0.13
per 1M tokens (−87%)
Context
#220 of 476
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Z.ai: GLM 5 — Z.ai
Quality
#21 of 65
77based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#191 of 338
44.6
Output tokens per second
Price
#227 of 442
$0.93
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.60 · Out $1.92
Cache hit price
#174 of 324
$0.12
per 1M tokens (−80%)
Context
#287 of 476
205k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores 89 and Z.ai: GLM 5 scores 77 — a 12-point lead for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview. They share 3 published evaluations, with Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview ahead on 2 and Z.ai: GLM 5 ahead on 1.

Blended pricing is $2.31 per 1M tokens for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview and $0.93 for Z.ai: GLM 5 — Z.ai: GLM 5 is about 2.5× cheaper.

Throughput is 46 tokens per second for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview and 45 for Z.ai: GLM 5, with time to first token at 1.9s and 1.9s. Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview accepts 262k tokens of context against 205k.

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview is proprietary; Z.ai: GLM 5 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 15 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 4 Sep 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 89 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 77 based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $2.31 $0.93
Output tok/s 46 45
Context window 262k 205k
Providers 1 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 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Known Good Index 89 77
Coding Index 69
Openness Index 5 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

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

GPQA Diamond87 / 88
Mock AIME 2024–2591 / 80
SWE-bench Verified77 / 72

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

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 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Text Arena 1,446 1,446
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,460 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 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Input $/1M $1.03 $0.60
Output $/1M $6.16 $1.92
Blended $/1M $2.31 $0.93
Cache read $/1M $0.130 $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 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Context window 262k 205k
Max output tokens 66k 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 Max PreviewZ.ai: GLM 5
Output tokens/s 46 45
Time to first token 1.9s 1.9s
The Known Good

Providers

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

15 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5 tok/s
Alibaba · first party $2.31 49
Amazon Bedrock · first party $1.55 96
GMICloud $0.93 57
Baidu · first party $1.08 55
Z.AI · first party $1.55 48
Novita $1.55 46
Chutes $1.35 45
AtlasCloud $1.50 35
SiliconFlow $1.35 31
StreamLake $0.93 29
DeepInfra $0.97 22
Venice $1.55 22
DigitalOcean $1.55 8
Parasail $1.55
Phala $1.77

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 →