Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) vs Thinking Machines: Inkling

For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) costs $0.095 and Inkling costs $2.01, so GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) is about 21.2 times cheaper for the same work.

GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) reads up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text, against about 786 pages for Inkling.

Only GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) offers structured output and video input; only Inkling offers audio input.

On our blended benchmark score GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) leads 69.6 to 37.2.

Across the 20 tasks where they differ, GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) scores higher on 20 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).

GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) was released in August 2026 and Inkling in July 2026.

Pick GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) if you need lower cost, long documents, structured output, video input, benchmark performance or the stronger all-round task scores; pick Inkling if you need audio input.

Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.