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Z.ai

Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash

GLM 5.3 Flash Overview

GLM-5.3-Flash is the first natively multimodal model in Z.ai's GLM-5 series, a mixture-of-experts transformer with roughly 320 billion total parameters and 18 billion activated per token. It routes each token through 8 of 288 experts across 45 language layers that interleave KDA linear attention with sparse multi-head latent attention, and pairs them with a 24-layer vision encoder that handles image and video input. The checkpoint declares a maximum context length of 1,048,576 tokens, ships in native FP8, and includes a multi-token prediction draft layer for speculative decoding. Z.ai reports that the hybrid attention design reduces attention computation by 3.01x and KV cache size by 4.44x relative to GLM-5.3.

The model starts from a newly trained base built on a 30 trillion token multimodal pre-training corpus and adopts Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections to improve scaling efficiency. Vision is integrated into the coding and agent loop, so the model can inspect interfaces, rendered output, and images while operating across code, browsers, and graphical user interfaces. Z.ai reports scores of 84.3 on Terminal-Bench 2.1, 63.4 on DeepSWE 1.1, 55.3 on Humanity's Last Exam with tools, and 48.8 on AutomationBench, and the model exposes low, high, and max thinking modes.

GLM 5.3 Flash Interactive Demo

Model settings

Thinking level

Max output tokens

Default 65,536 · max 65,536

Sign in to adjust thinking and output length per run.

Results appear here. Add an image or pick an example to run GLM 5.3 Flash.

GLM 5.3 Flash Details & Performance

Details

Resources

Vision Tasks

CaptioningChart Question AnsweringClassificationDocument Question AnsweringImage TaggingMulti-Label ClassificationOCRObject DetectionVision LanguageVisual Question Answering

Features

Foundation VisionLLMs with Vision CapabilitiesMultimodal Vision

Usage

Past 30 Days

Performance

Avg. Latency

GLM 5.3 Flash Vision Evals

Vision Evals is Roboflow's ground-truth benchmark: every model runs the same real-world samples across six vision tasks, and answers are scored against ground truth.

Evals updated September 5, 2026Pricing updated September 13, 2026

Overall score#33 of 53
66.3%
Avg cost / sample#7 of 53
$0.0005
Avg speed / sample#14 of 53
6.78s
Avg tokens / sample
2.4K

Strengths and weaknesses

GLM 5.3 Flash averages 66.3% across the six Vision Evals tasks, ranking #33 of 53 models overall.

Its weakest relative showing is Object Detection, ranking #46 of 53 at 33.1%.

At $0.0005 per sample it is the 7th cheapest of the 53 benchmarked models, and its average inference time of 6.8s per sample makes it the 14th fastest.

Performance profile

Field medianGLM 5.3 Flash

Field medians: Object Detection 53.9%, Counting 56.8%, Identification 84.4%, OCR 88.7%, Data Extraction 84.5%, Reasoning 54.1%.

Results by task

TaskScoreField (0 to 100)RankCost / sampleSpeed
Object Detection
33.1%
#46 of 53$0.00089.10s
Counting
55.4%
#30 of 53$0.00026.20s
Identification
84.4%
#23 of 53$0.00026.45s
OCR
90.6%
#21 of 53$0.00047.41s
Data Extraction
83.5%
#32 of 53$0.00024.78s
Reasoning (low)
51.0%
#29 of 53$0.00024.44s
Reasoning (high)
59.6%
#31 of 39$0.00035.38s
  • Thinking longer helps: 8.6 points higher on reasoning at high effort for 1.2x the cost and 1.2x the latency.

Price vs. performance

Score vs. cost

Overall benchmark score against estimated cost per sample, on a log scale. Upper-left is the sweet spot: high quality at low cost.

52 models on the current benchmark · scores and efficiency pooled across all six tasks at low effort · GLM 5.3 Flash highlighted

GLM 5.3 Flash scores are from a single run per task; a three-run re-run under the current protocol is pending · Methodology

View all Vision Evals →

GLM 5.3 Flash Pricing

GLM 5.3 Flash costs $0.150 per 1M input tokens and $0.500 per 1M output tokens.

Input$0.150 / 1M tokens
Output$0.500 / 1M tokens
Cached input$0.030 / 1M tokens

Pricing updated Sep 13, 2026

Alternatives to GLM 5.3 Flash

Other models worth comparing for similar use cases.

Qwen
Qwen3.7 Flash
Qwen3.7 Flash is the low-latency, cost-oriented tier of Alibaba's Qwen3.7 series, a vision-language reasoning model that accepts interleaved text and image input and returns text. It is built as a hybrid thinking model: like the rest of the Qwen3.7, Qwen3.6, and Qwen3.5 families served through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, it can either emit an explicit reasoning trace before answering or respond directly, with thinking behavior controlled by an enable_thinking switch that defaults to on for the Qwen3.7 generation. The model exposes a context window of roughly one million tokens and a maximum generation length of 65,536 tokens, which allows long multi-image sequences, long documents, and extended agent trajectories to be held in a single request.Functionally, Qwen3.7 Flash targets multimodal agent workloads rather than pure chat. Reported strengths include object recognition, spatial understanding, and perception of real-world scenes, alongside visual coding, search, and computer-use style interaction where the model reads screen content and reasons over interface state. Weights are not published; the model is a proprietary endpoint positioned below Qwen3.7 Plus and Qwen3.7 Max in the same series, and it supports function calling and tool use for agentic pipelines.
Google
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Gemini 3.8 Flash is a natively multimodal reasoning model in Google's Gemini 3 series, positioned as the speed and cost oriented Flash tier while targeting long-horizon software engineering, autonomous agents, and enterprise workflows. It accepts text, images, video, audio, and PDF documents in a single request and returns text, with an input limit of 1,048,576 tokens and an output limit of 65,536 tokens. Thinking is configurable at low, medium, and high levels, and the model supports function calling, code execution, structured outputs, context caching, search and Maps grounding, file search, and computer use in preview. Image generation, audio generation, and the Live API are not supported.On vision oriented evaluations the model reports 86.2% on CharXiv Reasoning for chart and figure synthesis and 87.8% on LVBench for long video understanding in agentic mode, alongside 90.8% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 and 61.6% on SWE-Bench Pro for coding. Following Gemini API conventions, it can localize objects by emitting bounding boxes as [ymin, xmin, ymax, xmax] integers normalized to a 0 to 1000 range, which supports prompt driven detection and grounding in addition to captioning, document parsing, and visual question answering. The knowledge cutoff is March 2026, though coverage in some domains reflects the January 2025 cutoff shared across the Gemini 3 family.
Google
Gemini 3.7 Flash
Gemini 3.7 Flash is a proprietary multimodal model from Google, positioned in the Flash branch of the Gemini 3 series that trades some of the capacity of the larger Pro models for lower latency and lower cost per token. It accepts interleaved text and image input alongside other modalities handled by the Gemini family and returns text, and it continues the series pattern of exposing a configurable thinking budget so that reasoning effort can be scaled up for harder problems or reduced for high throughput extraction, routing and classification work. The model is announced roughly three weeks after Gemini 3.6 Flash, part of an unusually fast iteration cadence within the Flash line.Google reports gains concentrated in agentic coding and front end generation, citing a WebDev Arena Elo of 1588 for this release compared with 1538 for the preceding Flash model, and describes it as producing more functional layouts and more feature complete applications in fewer prompts. Weights are not published and the architecture, parameter count and training corpus are undisclosed, consistent with prior Gemini releases. Visual capability follows the Flash lineage, covering image and document understanding, chart and diagram interpretation, text recognition in images, and general visual question answering.
OpenAI
GPT-5.6 Terra
GPT-5.6 Terra is the mid-tier reasoning model in OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family, which also includes the flagship Sol and the lightweight Luna. Introduced in a limited preview on June 26, 2026, and made broadly available on July 9, 2026, Terra accepts text and image input and produces text output, supporting vision, function calling, tool use, and agentic workflows. It is designed as a balanced option for everyday professional and production workloads — including coding assistance, document analysis, customer support, and multi-step agent tasks — where both output quality and cost efficiency matter. OpenAI positions Terra as delivering performance competitive with GPT-5.5 at approximately half the price, with a context window of around 1,050,000 tokens. On Terminal-Bench 2.1, Terra scores 84.3%, matching Claude Fable 5 on that benchmark. Under OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, Terra is rated High for cybersecurity and biological capabilities, meaning it demonstrates meaningful capability in those domains without reaching the Critical threshold.GPT-5.6 introduces a new naming convention in which the generation number (5.6) is paired with a durable capability tier name (Sol, Terra, or Luna), allowing each tier to advance on its own schedule. Terra carries the API identifier gpt-5.6-terra and supports the same reasoning effort controls available across the family, including adjustable reasoning depth. The model includes prompt caching with explicit cache breakpoints and a 30-minute minimum cache life, with cache writes billed at 1.25x the uncached input rate and cache reads receiving a 90% discount. GPT-5.6 Terra is a proprietary, closed-weights model served through the OpenAI API, Codex, and ChatGPT.
Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 5
Claude Sonnet 5 is a mid-tier large language model from Anthropic, released on June 30, 2026, as the latest model in the Sonnet series and a direct successor to Claude Sonnet 4.6. It is a hybrid reasoning model designed primarily for agentic workflows, software coding, and professional tasks. The model features a 1 million token context window, a 128k maximum output token limit, and runs adaptive thinking by default, giving API users fine-grained control over reasoning effort across five levels (low, medium, high, max, and extra-high). It uses an updated tokenizer shared with Opus 4.7 and later models, which produces approximately 30% more tokens for equivalent text compared to earlier Claude models. On benchmarks, Sonnet 5 scores 63.2% on agentic coding and 81.2% on OSWorld, narrowing the gap with Opus 4.8 while remaining at Sonnet-tier pricing.The model supports text and image input with text output, and accepts tools including browsers and terminals for autonomous multi-step task execution. Anthropic's safety evaluations report that Sonnet 5 shows a lower rate of undesirable behaviors than Sonnet 4.6 and is generally safer in agentic contexts, with improved resistance to prompt injection and reduced sycophancy. Cybersecurity safeguards equivalent to those on Opus 4.7 and 4.8 are active, though Anthropic notes the model was not deliberately trained on cybersecurity tasks. The model is proprietary and API-only, with no open weights.
Z.ai
GLM 5V Turbo
GLM-5V-Turbo is a native multimodal model from Z.ai that extends the GLM family with joint image, video, and text input aimed at vision-centered coding and agent workflows. The model reads screenshots, design drafts, document layouts, and interface captures and generates runnable code from them, covering tasks such as turning a visual design into a working front end, diagnosing rendering and layout defects from screen captures, and operating graphical user interfaces during long-horizon agent runs. It accepts roughly 200,000 input tokens and can emit up to 131,072 output tokens in a single response, which supports sessions that hold specifications, source files, logs, and visual references at the same time.Training includes a joint reinforcement learning stage spanning more than 30 tasks simultaneously, an approach Z.ai describes as a way to counter the trade-off in which improving visual recognition degrades programming ability and the reverse. Reported evaluations cover pure-text coding on the backend, frontend, and repository exploration tracks of CC-Bench-V2, together with agent execution suites such as PinchBench, ClawEval, and ZClawBench, indicating that text coding behavior is retained after visual input is added.

GLM 5.3 Flash License

MIT · Permissive license

GLM 5.3 Flash is released under MIT, a permissive license. The GLM 5.3 Flash license lets you use, modify, and sell work built on the model, with the copyright notice as the only real obligation and no requirement to open-source related code changes.

Commercial use
Permitted with no separate commercial license. No usage caps, revenue thresholds, or field-of-use limits apply to GLM 5.3 Flash.
Modification
Permitted. You can fine-tune or rewrite GLM 5.3 Flash and keep the result closed-source.
Redistribution
Permitted. Include the original copyright and permission notice in copies or substantial portions of the work.

MIT grants no explicit patent license and disclaims all warranties. If patent exposure is a concern for your deployment, review it with counsel before launch.

Read the full MIT license ↗

Do I need a commercial license for GLM 5.3 Flash?

No commercial license is needed for GLM 5.3 Flash: permissive terms let you keep related code private while deploying commercially.

Do not hesitate to reach out with questions for your commercial project — our team will help you start solving business problems on the first call. See Roboflow commercial licensing for the models included in each plan.

Talk to sales

This model is released under the MIT License, a short and permissive open-source license that allows commercial use, modification, and redistribution.

Yes. Under the terms of the MIT license, you can freely use this model for commercial purposes. You must retain the copyright notice and license text when redistributing.

License information is provided as a guide and is not legal advice.

Frequently Asked Questions About GLM 5.3 Flash Vision

Yes. GLM 5.3 Flash accepts image input and handles OCR, data extraction, object counting, identification, visual reasoning, and object detection. On Roboflow's Vision Evals its strongest task is OCR at 90.6% (#21 of 53 at low effort). You can test it on your own image in the demo above.

Yes. its transcriptions match the ground truth 90.6% on average (#21 of 53 at low effort) on Vision Evals OCR. Pulling specific fields out of documents (data extraction) scores 83.5%.

Not its strength. On Vision Evals, GLM 5.3 Flash scores 33.1% mAP@50 on object detection (#46 of 53 at low effort) and 55.4% judge-graded accuracy on object counting. For production counting or precise localization, pairing it with a specialized detector like RF-DETR or your own trained model in a Roboflow Workflow is usually more reliable: detect the objects, then count the detections.

On our benchmark's task mix, GLM 5.3 Flash averages $0.0005 per sample at $0.15 per 1M input and $0.50 per 1M output tokens (#7 of 53 on cost), with an average speed of 6.8s per sample across the benchmark. Actual cost depends on your images and prompts.

On the overall Vision Evals ranking, GLM 5.3 Flash sits #33 of 53 at 66.3%, just behind Claude Sonnet 5 (66.4%) and just ahead of Gemini 2.5 Pro (66%). See the full side-by-side: GLM 5.3 Flash vs Claude Sonnet 5.