GLM-5.3-Flash vs Qwen3.8 Flash
Qwen3.8 Flash is the better buy: the AIGROW small-business benchmark cannot tell the two apart, and Qwen3.8 Flash has the lower list price. GLM-5.3-Flash passed 18 of 20 tasks and costs $0.15 in and $0.50 out per million tokens; Qwen3.8 Flash passed 19 and costs $0.15 in and $0.47 out.
AIGROW credit covers Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Fable 5.2, Claude Fable 5.1, GPT-6 Astra, Claude Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6.1 Terra, Grok 4.7 and Gemini 4 Argon. See API credit
$25 a month brings $110 of API credit and cancels any time; $25 once buys $100. US dollars, standard rate, shortest context band. Cost per pass from the AIGROW small-business benchmark.
- GLM-5.3-Flash
- $0.831
- Tasks passed
- 18 of 20
- Qwen3.8 Flash
- $1.09
- Tasks passed
- 19 of 20
AIGROW small-business benchmark, failed runs included.
Two new Chinese budget models priced within a few cents of each other. GLM-5.3-Flash costs $0.831 per 1,000 passing answers on the AIGROW small-business benchmark, Qwen3.8 Flash $1.09. 1,000 support replies cost $0.65 on GLM-5.3-Flash and $0.64 on Qwen3.8 Flash, so GLM-5.3-Flash costs 2% more.
What each one costs
The API price per million tokens and the cheapest app plan with each model, from the makers’ own pages. Each name opens that model’s full price page.
- GLM-5.3-Flash
- On the Z.ai API, GLM-5.3-Flash costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens.
- Qwen3.8 Flash
- On the Alibaba (Qwen) API, Qwen3.8 Flash costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.47 per million output tokens.
Side by side
Each maker’s published rate for its standard tier. Cached input is what a repeated prompt prefix costs once the provider has stored it.
| Fact | GLM-5.3-Flash | Qwen3.8 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Z.ai | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Tier | Small and fast | Small and fast |
| Input, per M tokens | $0.15 | $0.15 |
| Output, per M tokens | $0.50 | $0.47 |
| Cached input | $0.03 | Not published |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Released | 26 Aug 2026 | Not published |
| Weights | Open weights | Closed weights |
What a job costs on each
1,000 runs of each job at the two list prices. The gap moves from job to job because the models price input, output and cached context differently.
| Job | GLM-5.3-Flash | Qwen3.8 Flash | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support reply3,000 in, 400 out. | $0.65 | $0.64 | Qwen3.8 Flash, 2% less |
| Document summary25,000 in, 1,000 out. | $4.25 | $4.22 | Even |
| Agent task80,000 in (70,000 cached), 3,000 out. | $5.10 | $13.41 | GLM-5.3-Flash, 62% less |
The token counts are ours, chosen to look like real work; the prices are the makers’. A model with no published cache price bills the agent task’s repeated context at its full input rate.
The small print
What each base rate leaves out, from the makers’ own pages: surcharges, discounts, promotions and cache pricing.
- GLM-5.3-Flash
- 320B total, 18B active parameters. Cached-input storage is 'Limited-time Free'. Z.ai also sells GLM-5.3-FlashX ($0.37 / $1.25), not included. Open weights on Hugging Face (zai-org/GLM-5.3-Flash). Z.ai’s pricing page
- Qwen3.8 Flash
- International deployment, one tier up to 1M input tokens. Cache discounts as for Qwen3.8 Max. Context taken from the top pricing tier (1M). Alibaba (Qwen)’s pricing page
Other comparisons
Every head to head on the list that involves GLM-5.3-Flash or Qwen3.8 Flash.
Compare GLM-5.3-Flash and Qwen3.8 Flash with 52 other models
The price list sets every model’s input and output price side by side, with what a support reply, a document summary and an agent task cost on each.
Prices checked 12 November 2026