GLM-5.3 vs Claude Opus 5.5: price, benchmarks and how to switch
GLM-5.3 on Inferway next to Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5. Prices come from each side's public price list and each benchmark score names its source and the Claude version it was measured against. Inferway does not offer Claude models; this page only helps you decide whether a different model is worth a trial in your Claude tooling.
OpenAI, GPT, Anthropic, Claude and the other model and company names on this page belong to their owners. They are used here only to say what is being compared. Inferway is not affiliated with them, does not resell their models, and this page is not an endorsement by or from them.
Price (per million tokens, USD)
| Item | Inferway GLM-5.3 | Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.50 | $4.00 |
| Cached input | $0.08 | $0.20 |
| Output | $1.60 | $20.00 |
Against Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5: input about 87% lower, output about 92% lower (list prices, rounded down).
Inferway price in CNY (China market): ¥3.50 input, ¥11.20 output per million tokens.
Both sides are in USD so the rows compare like for like. Inferway list price from the live public catalog; the other side's price from its own public price page, read on the date shown under Sources.
Cached-input rows put list prices side by side; the caching mechanisms are different features, not equivalents.
No first-token latency row: Inferway has no published measurement for this comparison yet.
Context window and output limit
| Item | Inferway GLM-5.3 | Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | 128K |
Benchmark scores: Z.ai's own coding benchmark
Z.ai's GLM-5.3 documentation compares against two Claude models, neither of them the current Claude Opus 5.5, and each row names the version. Z.ai Code Bench is Z.ai's private benchmark.
| Benchmark | GLM-5.3 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| Z.ai Code Bench, High effort (%) | 31.4 | 29.5 |
At Max effort the same documentation has GLM-5.3 at 34.5% and Claude Fable 5 at 39.5%, so GLM-5.3 is behind there. The higher score in each row is shaded; vendor-published, not reproduced by a third party.
Benchmark scores: DeepSeek's release table
DeepSeek's release table has GLM-5.3 and Claude Opus 5 side by side. Only the three rows where GLM-5.3 is closest are shown. On the other rows in that table GLM-5.3 scores below Claude Opus 5; the source has the full numbers.
| Benchmark | GLM-5.3 | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Agents' Last Exam | 28.5 | 28.6 |
| Automation-Bench v1.0.6 | 48.8 | 50.3 |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | 66.9 | 74.0 |
The higher score in each row is shaded. Harnesses differ between rows (DeepSWE uses the Mini-SWE-V2 harness), so compare within a row. Claude Opus 5 is the previous generation relative to Claude Opus 5.5.
Data handling
An external organization processes request content. Inferway's zero data retention commitment does not apply. See the Privacy Policy for data handling details.
Choosing between them
Worth a small trial when
- You already work in Claude Code or with the Anthropic SDK and want to try a much cheaper model for the bulk of your requests.
- Your requests do not need image input: GLM-5.3 takes text only.
Stay with the official API when
- You rely on prompt caching (cache_control), Anthropic's hosted tools such as web search and code execution, or returned thinking blocks: Inferway's /v1/messages does not take or return them.
- You need image input.
Check on your own data first when
- Your workload is hard agentic coding: on Z.ai's own Max-effort numbers GLM-5.3 is behind Claude Fable 5, and on most rows of DeepSeek's table it is behind Claude Opus 5. Check on your own tasks.
Differences from calling the official API
- Supported on /v1/messages: model, messages (user and assistant turns), max_tokens, stream, system, temperature, top_p, stop_sequences, tools with input_schema and tool_choice. GLM-5.3 takes text input only.
- Rejected at dispatch: cache_control (prompt caching), service_tier, mcp_servers and container. Hosted tool types (web_search_, code_execution_, computer_, memory_, text_editor_, bash_) are not available; client-defined tools are.
- GLM-5.3 always reasons (thinking cannot be switched off) with low, high and max effort. Thinking blocks are not returned, and reasoning tokens are billed.
How to switch
Point Claude Code at Inferway
Export these variables in the terminal you start Claude Code from. ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL is the origin without /v1: the client appends /v1/messages itself. ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN sends the Inferway key as a bearer token; the key stays in the environment and never enters a file.
Use the environment rather than a settings file. An env block inside a settings file does not redirect the endpoint before the session authenticates, so the client still contacts Anthropic and reports an invalid bearer token — a failure that looks like a bad key but is a wrong address.
This model ID is not in Claude Code's built-in catalog, so the client warns and assumes a smaller context window. CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS states the published window for this model.
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL='https://api.inferway.ai' export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="$INFERWAY_API_KEY" export ANTHROPIC_MODEL='z-ai/glm-5.3' export CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS=1000000 claude
Setup recipes are not proof that a client works with a model. Each client guide marks what has been tested, and what has not stays marked unverified.
Claude Code guide →Anthropic SDK via /v1/messages →Model page: GLM-5.3 →
Sources
Every number about another company's model on this page comes from one of these pages. Scores are vendor-published and have not been reproduced by Inferway.
- claude.com/pricing · read on 2026-11-01
- docs.z.ai/guides/llm/glm-5.3 · read on 2026-11-01
- huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 · read on 2026-11-01
- platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview · read on 2026-11-01