Standard Compute
Model Comparison 2026

GLM 5.2 vs Qwen3 235B A22B

GLM 5.2
Z.AI · Frontier · Open weights
$1.26/1M · 1.0M ctx
Qwen3 235B A22B
Alibaba (Qwen) · Budget · Open weights
$0.23/1M · 262K ctx

Community Vote

Pick a winner in each dimension — change your vote anytime. 1 votes cast so far.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
GLM 5.2 100%0% Qwen3 235B
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for $
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results — fewer refusals, loops, and format breaks

Specs & Pricing, Side by Side

Spec
GLM 5.2
Qwen3 235B
Maker
Z.AI
Alibaba (Qwen)
Blended price / 1M
$1.26
$0.23
Input / output
$0.77 in · $2.42 out / 1M tokens
$0.09 in · $0.55 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
262K
Open weights
Yes
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
No
Output Quality
9.0
8.0
Agentic Ability
9.2
8.0
Speed
7.6
8.2
Value for $
8.8
10.0
Reliability
8.7
8.8

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: GLM 5.2 or Qwen3 235B?

Updated 2026-08-02

Choose GLM 5.2 if you want open-weight coding agents that want a long context. Choose Qwen3 235B A22B if you want self-hosted or ultra-cheap open-weight agents.

In our editorial scoring, Qwen3 235B A22B leads in 3 of five dimensions (speed, value for $ and reliability), while GLM 5.2 leads in 2. On price, GLM 5.2 runs about $1.26 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Qwen3 235B A22B is about $0.23 and open-weight.

Across 1 community votes on this matchup, GLM 5.2 currently leads in 1 of five dimensions. Cast your own vote above to move the needle.

Where GLM 5.2 falls short
  • Just behind the closed flagships on hard tasks
  • Hosted throughput varies
Full GLM 5.2 breakdown →
Where Qwen3 235B falls short
  • Behind frontier models on quality
  • Needs real GPUs to self-host well
Full Qwen3 235B breakdown →

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