GLM API cost per request, October 2026: a chat turn and a long document
What one GLM API request costs on GLM 5.3, 5.2 and 5.3 Flash: a chat turn and a long document, worked at Z.ai’s list price and ours.
How a GLM API request is billed
Z.ai bills GLM API calls per token, at three rates per million tokens: input, cached input and output. At list, GLM output costs three to three and a half times input. A request costs its tokens times the rates of the model it named; there is no seat or plan price.
GLM per-token rates
4 GLM models. Each row shows our price and Z.ai’s list price.
Model GLM 5.3 GLM 5.3 Flash GLM 5.2 GLM 5.1
----------- ------- ------------- ------- -------
Input $0.3276 $0.084 $0.18 $0.5796
Cached $0.0608 $0.009 $0.051 $0.1076
Output $1.0296 $0.15 $0.60 $1.8216
List input $1.092 $0.15 $0.60 $0.966
List cached $0.2028 $0.03 $0.15 $0.1794
List output $3.432 $0.50 $2.00 $3.036USD per million tokens. Ours from the live catalog; list is the price on Z.ai’s pricing page, the read date on each model page.
The lowest price here is GLM 5.3 Flash: $0.084 in and $0.15 out.
GLM API cost per request, worked
A chat turn of 2,000 input and 500 output tokens, and a long-document request of 50,000 input and 2,000 output. Both sizes are assumptions; nothing is counted at the cached rate.
- GLM 5.3: Chat turn, list: $0.0039; Chat turn, here: $0.0012; Long document, list: $0.0615; Long document, here: $0.0184.
- GLM 5.2: Chat turn, list: $0.0022; Chat turn, here: $0.0007; Long document, list: $0.034; Long document, here: $0.0102.
- GLM 5.3 Flash: Chat turn, list: $0.0006; Chat turn, here: $0.0002; Long document, list: $0.0085; Long document, here: $0.0045.
Input tokens times the input rate plus output tokens times the output rate, per million.
GLM 5.3: $0.3276 in and $1.0296 out here, against $1.092 and $3.432 at list, 70% under on input and 70% on output.
GLM 5.2: $0.18 in and $0.60 out here, against $0.60 and $2.00 at list, 70% under on input and 70% on output.
GLM 5.3 Flash: $0.084 in and $0.15 out here, against $0.15 and $0.50 at list, 44% under on input and 70% on output.
GLM API cost per month, worked
Two monthly workloads on the same models: 1,000 chat turns a day and 100 long documents a day, each for 30 days. Every request is the size above, so a month of chat is 60 million input and 15 million output tokens, and a month of documents is 150 million input and 6 million output. The volumes are assumptions; nothing is counted at the cached rate.
- GLM 5.3: Chat month, list: $117.00; Chat month, here: $35.10; Document month, list: $184.39; Document month, here: $55.32.
- GLM 5.2: Chat month, list: $66.00; Chat month, here: $19.80; Document month, list: $102.00; Document month, here: $30.60.
- GLM 5.3 Flash: Chat month, list: $16.50; Chat month, here: $7.29; Document month, list: $25.50; Document month, here: $13.50.
USD for 30 days: the per-request cost above times 30,000 chat turns or 3,000 documents.
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GLM 5.3: $90.42 a month here for both workloads, against $301.39 at list, $210.97 less.
GLM 5.2: $50.40 a month here for both workloads, against $168.00 at list, $117.60 less.
GLM 5.3 Flash: $20.79 a month here for both workloads, against $42.00 at list, $21.21 less.
Cost scales with volume, so 10,000 chat turns a day is ten times the chat column.
What cached input does to the cost
When a request repeats a prefix the API has seen, such as a long system prompt or a document, the response reports those tokens as cached and they bill at the cached rate in the first table. A model with no cached rate bills them at its input rate.
Calling it
Point the SDK at our base URL with your key. Every GLM id in the table works with the same two values.
openai.py
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
base_url="https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1",
api_key="sk-uplink-live-...",
)
completion = client.chat.completions.create(
model="glm-5.3",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarize this in one line."}],
)
print(completion.choices[0].message.content)More in the SDK guide.
Questions
Is there a subscription? No. Credit is prepaid from $10, and each top-up locks your prices for 30 days.
Which GLM model should I use? GLM 5.3 for most work; here it costs less than GLM 5.1 on input and output. GLM 5.3 Flash for high-volume chat, tagging and agent subtasks, at cents per million tokens. Run the same prompt on both and compare.
Where is the full price list? On the GLM API pricing page, and every other model on the Models page. To see what your own usage would cost, re-price an export on the savings page.
Related
- LLM API pricing comparison, October 2026
- Kimi API cost per request
- Qwen API cost per request
- DeepSeek API cost per request
- GLM 5.3 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813
- GLM 5.3 vs Kimi K3
- MiniMax M2.7 vs GLM 5.3
- Model comparisons
Originally published at uplinkswitch.ai. Prices are from the live catalog on 2026‑10‑19; the original page re-reads them on every load.
