Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

GLM 5.3 vs GPT-6 Astra

GLM 5.3
Z.AI · Frontier · Open weights
$1.50/1M · 1.0M ctx
GPT-6 Astra
OpenAI · Frontier · Proprietary
$22/1M · 1.1M ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for money
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
GLM 5.3
GPT-6 Astra
Maker
Z.AI
OpenAI
Blended price / 1M
$1.50
$22
Input / output
$0.08 in · $4.80 out / 1M tokens
$10 in · $50 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
1.1M
Open weights
Yes
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
9.3
9.7
Agentic Ability
9.4
9.7
Speed
7.8
6.8
Value for money
9.0
6.9
Reliability
8.8
9.3

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

Verdict: GLM 5.3 or GPT-6 Astra?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose GLM 5.3 if you want open-weight coding agents that need near-frontier agentic ability. Choose GPT-6 Astra if you want the hardest coding and research tasks in OpenAI-based stacks, where cost is secondary.

In our editorial scoring, GPT-6 Astra leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and reliability), while GLM 5.3 leads in 2. On price, GLM 5.3 runs about $1.50 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; GPT-6 Astra is about $22 and proprietary.

Where GLM 5.3 falls short
  • Custom license with conditions for very large hosting providers
  • Reasoning cannot be turned off
Full GLM 5.3 breakdown →
Where GPT-6 Astra falls short
  • Five times GPT-6.1 Sol's price for a small measured gain
  • Slow: about 66 output tokens/s at max effort
Full GPT-6 Astra breakdown →

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