GLM 4.6 · Z.AI

What does GLM 4.6 cost to run in a coding agent?

GLM 4.6 costs about $0.015 per average coding-agent request on our measured traffic, at OpenRouter's listed prices of $0.50 per million input and $2 per million output tokens. It scores 19 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (an estimate), 41st of the 48 models we track. Source: Artificial Analysis (artificialanalysis.ai)

List prices: OpenRouter listed price, checked 2026-10-13. Request costs: Standard Compute gateway data, 79,301 coding-agent requests from 75 users, Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026. How we compute this

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What GLM 4.6 costs per coding-agent request

Cost at list price	GLM 4.6
Prompt under 100K tokens50% of requests, 87% of input cached	$0.0100
Prompt of 100K to 272K39% of requests, 88% of input cached	$0.023
Prompt over 272K tokens11% of requests, 86% of input cached	n/a
Average request	$0.015
100 requests	$1.47
Median session16 requests; a session ends after 10 idle minutes	$0.17
A month of regular usemedian of 20 users active on 5+ days	$15.56

Each logged request priced at the listed rates above for its own token counts, including cache reads and any higher rate for long prompts. Average output: 698 tokens per request. 20% of requests were larger than GLM 4.6's 205K context window and are left out of its figures.

GLM 4.6 benchmarks, speed and latency

Artificial Analysis	Value	Rank
Intelligence Index10 evaluations, 0 to 100	19 (estimate)	41 of 48
Output speedmedian	36 tokens/s	43 of 44
Time to first answer tokenincludes thinking time	59 s	23 of 44

Source: Artificial Analysis (artificialanalysis.ai). Measured variant: GLM-4.6 (Reasoning). Fetched October 13, 2026. Rank is among the models on this site, older versions included. Artificial Analysis runs Terminal-Bench 4.0 in its own setup, so its scores differ from the tbench.ai leaderboard.

What to watch for

Its 205K-token window is smaller than 20% of our coding-agent requests, which are left out of the figures above, so long agent sessions will hit the limit. The price is OpenRouter's listed rate on October 13, 2026, which can be a third-party host's; Z.AI's own API may charge differently.

About GLM 4.6

GLM 4.6 is Z.AI's open-weight model from September 30, 2025, with a 202K context. GLM 4.7 and the GLM 5 line have since overtaken it: Artificial Analysis estimates 19 on its Intelligence Index, against 45 for GLM 5.3, and lists it as superseded. Its 202K context is smaller than 19.7% of the coding-agent requests we measured. At OpenRouter's listed price it costs $0.015 per request in our measurements.

Sources: Artificial Analysis

GLM 4.6 FAQ

How much does GLM 4.6 cost per coding-agent request?

$0.015 on average at OpenRouter's listed price, $1.47 per 100 requests, and $0.17 for a median 16-request session. That is 79,301 real coding-agent requests (Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026) priced at OpenRouter's listed rates; the median request sent 99,534 input tokens, 87% of input was read from cache, and requests returned 698 output tokens on average.

Does GLM 4.6 charge more for long prompts?

No. GLM 4.6 bills the same rate per token up to its 205K-token context window, which is smaller than 20% of the coding-agent requests we measured.

How fast is GLM 4.6?

Artificial Analysis measures GLM-4.6 (Reasoning) at 36 output tokens per second, with 59 seconds to the first answer token, thinking time included. Source: Artificial Analysis (artificialanalysis.ai).

Is GLM 4.6 good for AI agents?

Short-context coding tasks on a tight budget. On our scoring, which is calibrated to public benchmarks, it rates 4.6/10 for agentic ability and 4.8/10 for output quality. Open weights.

What is GLM 4.6's context window?

GLM 4.6 has a 205K-token context window. Z.AI is the maker.

Is GLM 4.6 open source?

Yes. GLM 4.6 ships with open weights, so you can self-host it or run it through a hosted provider such as OpenRouter. Check the license before commercial use.

What are the downsides of GLM 4.6?

The main trade-offs: 202K context, smaller than 19.7% of the coding-agent requests we measured; Superseded by the GLM 5 line; GLM 5.3 scores far higher. It's strongest for short-context coding tasks on a tight budget.