GLM 5.2 vs GLM 4.6

Practical read: GLM 5.2 costs less and reads five times more context. One API key runs both.

No card required. Start with 1 million free tokens.

Side by side:

Z.ai: GLM 5.2 compared with GLM 4.6
Attribute	GLM 5.2 `z-ai/glm-5.2`	GLM 4.6 `zai-org/glm-4.6`
Price, 1M in + out	$2.30 Engy, cheapest route	$2.90 Novita AI, cheapest route
Best for	Low cost and long documents
Input / output, 1M	$0.72 / $1.58	$0.58 / $2.32
Cached input	$0.131875/1M to $0.773315/1M	$0.11605/1M
Context window	1.05M 1,048,576 tokens	205K 204,800 tokens
First token, p50	0.66 s via FriendliAI	Measuring
Throughput	265 tok/s via Telnyx	Measuring
AI IQ	IQ 118 #53 on AI IQ	Unrated
Provider routes	31 with failover	1
Privacy	Confidential E2EE and zero retention route	Varies by provider
Recent route uptime range	0.00% to 100.00%	100.00%
Publisher	Z.AI	Z.AI
Modes	chat	chat
More detail	Overview Pricing Providers Benchmarks	Overview

Price adds one million input and one million output tokens on the cheapest route. Prices and speed change: see the monthly reports and run a small eval before you choose a default.

Test both with your agent

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent.

Compare GLM 5.2 and GLM 4.6 in this project through TrustedRouter.

1. Read https://trustedrouter.com/docs/llms.txt
2. Point the OpenAI-compatible client at
   https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1 and read the key from
   TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY.
3. Run our eval prompts on z-ai/glm-5.2, then on zai-org/glm-4.6.
4. Show me cost, latency and quality side by side before changing the default.

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY"],
)
for model in ("z-ai/glm-5.2", "zai-org/glm-4.6"):
    response = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?"}],
    )
    print(model, response.choices[0].message.content)

for model in z-ai/glm-5.2 zai-org/glm-4.6; do
  curl https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1/chat/completions \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "{\"model\": \"$model\", \"messages\": [{\"role\": \"user\", \"content\": \"What is the capital of France?\"}]}"
done

Your agent will need an API key.

Questions

Which should I use, Z.ai: GLM 5.2 or GLM 4.6?

Z.ai: GLM 5.2 has the lower published input-plus-output rate, more Credits provider routes and the larger context window. There is not enough recent probe data to compare speed.

Is Z.ai: GLM 5.2 or GLM 4.6 cheaper?

The current cheapest TrustedRouter route is $2.2999/1M for Z.ai: GLM 5.2 and $2.90125/1M for GLM 4.6. The comparison uses current catalog prices and updates as provider pricing changes.

Is Z.ai: GLM 5.2 or GLM 4.6 faster?

Current measured p50 time to first token is 659 ms for Z.ai: GLM 5.2 and not enough data for GLM 4.6. These are routed probe measurements, not vendor-advertised speeds, and update as new samples arrive.

Can I test Z.ai: GLM 5.2 and GLM 4.6 with the same API?

Yes. Use the same OpenAI-compatible TrustedRouter base URL and API key, then change only the model id between z-ai/glm-5.2 and zai-org/glm-4.6. This makes side-by-side evals possible without maintaining two provider integrations.

More comparisons

All comparisons

Try GLM 5.2 and GLM 4.6 with one key.

TrustedRouter is useful when you know the model you want, but still need provider rollover, budget limits, usage records, and a prompt path you can verify.

No card required. Start with 1 million free tokens.