Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash vs OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Terra (batch)
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-11.
| Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Terra (batch) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | z-ai | openai |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 70.6 | 71.1 |
| Input Price | $0.15/M | $1.00/M |
| Output Price | $0.50/M | $6.00/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,050,000 |
| Max Output | 943,717 | 128,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 69.0 | 69.4 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, GLM 5.3 Flash costs $0.28 and GPT-5.6 Terra (batch) costs $2.50, so GLM 5.3 Flash is about 9.1 times cheaper for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 1,048,576 and 1,050,000 tokens, about 1,573 and 1,575 pages.
Only GLM 5.3 Flash offers video input.
Across the 16 tasks where they differ, GLM 5.3 Flash scores higher on 10 (SQL Generation, Code Completion, Code Documentation and others), GPT-5.6 Terra (batch) on 6 (Code Review, Code Refactoring, Bug Fixing and others).
GLM 5.3 Flash was released in August 2026 and GPT-5.6 Terra (batch) in July 2026.
Pick GLM 5.3 Flash if you need lower cost or video input.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Terra (batch) |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 142 | 141 |
| Code Review | 145 | 145 |
| Code Completion | 133 | 120 |
| Code Refactoring | 147 | 147 |
| Bug Fixing | 149 | 149 |
| Code Documentation | 138 | 136 |
| Regex Writing | 126 | 125 |
| Data Analysis | 134 | 134 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 136 | 136 |
| JSON Extraction | 131 | 122 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 129 | 119 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 134 | 134 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 134 | 134 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 149 | 148 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 127 | 118 |
| Blog Post Writing | 130 | 129 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →