The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus vs Z.ai: GLM 5.2 ·Alibaba vs Z.ai

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus vs Z.ai: GLM 5.2 — head-to-head comparison

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus profile Z.ai: GLM 5.2 profile All comparisons
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus — Alibaba
Quality
#18 of 61
78based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#170 of 316
47.5
Output tokens per second
Price
#167 of 340
$0.73
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.33 · Out $1.95
Cache hit price
#63 of 206
$0.050
per 1M tokens (−85%)
Context
#54 of 345
1.00M
tokens (~1,500 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
$1.12
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.73 · Out $2.28
Cache hit price
#116 of 206
$0.13
per 1M tokens (−81%)
Context
#45 of 345
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus scores 78 and Z.ai: GLM 5.2 scores 91 — a 14-point lead for Z.ai: GLM 5.2. They share 3 published evaluations, with Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus ahead on 1 and Z.ai: GLM 5.2 ahead on 2.

Blended pricing is $0.73 per 1M tokens for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus and $1.12 for Z.ai: GLM 5.2 — Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus is about 1.5× cheaper.

Throughput is 48 tokens per second for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus and 55 for Z.ai: GLM 5.2, with time to first token at 1.0s and 1.7s. Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus accepts 1.00M tokens of context against 1.05M.

Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus is proprietary; Z.ai: GLM 5.2 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 29 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 1 serve both.

Generated from tracked data on 26 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 PlusZ.ai: GLM 5.2
Known Good Index 78 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 91 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.73 $1.12
Output tok/s 48 55
Context window 1.00M 1.05M
Providers 1 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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 PlusZ.ai: GLM 5.2
Known Good Index 78 91
Mathematics Index 91 86
Science Index 91 97
Agentic Index 51 91
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 Plus · marker = Z.ai: GLM 5.2 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond87 / 92
MATH / AIME91 / 86
SWE-bench Verified58 / 79

Right-hand figures read Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus / Z.ai: GLM 5.2. Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus leads on 1 of 3, Z.ai: GLM 5.2 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 PlusZ.ai: GLM 5.2
Text Arena 1,437 1,464
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,444 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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 PlusZ.ai: GLM 5.2
Input $/1M $0.33 $0.73
Output $/1M $1.95 $2.28
Blended $/1M $0.73 $1.12
Cache read $/1M $0.050 $0.135
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 PlusZ.ai: GLM 5.2
Context window 1.00M 1.05M
Max output tokens 66k 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.

MetricQwen: Qwen3.6 PlusZ.ai: GLM 5.2
Output tokens/s 48 55
Time to first token 1.0s 1.7s
The Known Good

Providers

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

29 hosts · 1 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 Plus tok/s Z.ai: GLM 5.2 blendedZ.ai: GLM 5.2 tok/s
Alibaba · first party $0.73 49 $1.27 69
CoreWeave — — $1.18 181
BaseTen — — $2.15 119
Wafer — — $2.15 103
Ionstream — — $2.15 101
Friendli — — $2.15 80
Cloudflare — — $2.15 74
Fireworks — — $2.15 65
Decart — — $1.52 60
Chutes — — $1.93 56
Parasail — — $2.15 56
DeepInfra — — $1.45 49
Z.AI · first party — — $2.15 49
SiliconFlow — — $2.00 48
Together — — $2.15 47
AkashML — — $1.18 46
Phala — — $2.15 46
Morph — — $1.85 43
Baidu · first party — — $1.12 40
GMICloud — — $1.42 39
Venice — — $2.15 39
AtlasCloud — — $1.94 38
Novita — — $1.12 37
StreamLake — — $1.11 37
Inceptron — — $1.43 29
Io Net — — $4.40 29
Sail Research — — $1.72 20
Ambient — — $1.89 14
DigitalOcean — — $1.89 13

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 →