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AI Language Models · Tool Face-Off

GLM-4 vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Quick answer

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the stronger all-rounder for English-speaking users, with superior reasoning and coding chops. GLM-4 punches back hard for Chinese-language tasks and budget-conscious API users.

GLM-4
Zhipu AI's bilingual powerhouse, built for Chinese-English tasks on a budget
4★
VS
Our pick
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Anthropic's sharpest model — fast, safe, and scary good at complex reasoning
4.3★
API Input Price
~$0.001/1K tokens (GLM-4-Flash free tier available)
~$3/1M tokens ($0.003/1K tokens)
API Output Price
~$0.001/1K tokens
~$15/1M tokens ($0.015/1K tokens)
Context Window
128K tokens
200K tokens
Vision / Multimodal
Yes (GLM-4V variant)
Yes (native vision)
Coding Benchmarks (HumanEval)
~72%
~93%
Chinese NLP Tasks
State-of-the-art (C-Eval top tier)
Good but not optimized
Free Tier
Yes — GLM-4-Flash free via API
No free API tier
Tool / Function Calling
Yes
Yes (highly reliable)
Safety & RLHF
Moderate alignment
Constitutional AI, industry-leading safety
API Ecosystem
Zhipu AI / Bigmodel.cn platform
Anthropic API + AWS Bedrock + Google Vertex
Speed (latency)
Fast, especially Flash variant
Fast (optimized vs Opus)
Open-source Option
Yes (GLM-4-9B on HuggingFace)
No

GLM-4

Pricing Value★★★★½
Coding Ability★★★½☆
Context Window★★★½☆
Ease of Integration★★★½☆
Multilingual Support★★★★☆
Reasoning & Accuracy★★★½☆
Chinese Language Quality★★★★★

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Pricing Value★★★½☆
Coding Ability★★★★★
Context Window★★★★★
Ease of Integration★★★★½
Multilingual Support★★★★☆
Reasoning & Accuracy★★★★★
Chinese Language Quality★★★☆☆

Worth knowing

Claude 3.5 Sonnet was so good at coding that developers started using it to write code that calls... Claude 3.5 Sonnet. It's AIs all the way down.

If you want

You need the best reasoning, coding, or English-language writing

Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads nearly every English-centric benchmark and produces noticeably cleaner, more nuanced output.

→ Pick Claude 3.5 Sonnet
If you want

Your app primarily serves Chinese-speaking users

GLM-4 is purpose-built for Chinese NLP and outperforms Claude on C-Eval and other Chinese language benchmarks.

→ Pick GLM-4
If you want

You're building on a tight budget or need a free API

GLM-4-Flash is free and GLM-4 pricing is a fraction of Claude's — ideal for high-volume or prototype projects.

→ Pick GLM-4
If you want

You want to self-host a capable open model

GLM-4-9B is publicly available on HuggingFace; Claude has no open-source release whatsoever.

→ Pick GLM-4
DeepSeek V3VSGoogle Gemini 2.5 Flash
AI Language Models
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