GLM-5.3 vs Kimi K3
Open-weight frontier models released within two months of each other, with Kimi costing two to three times as much. Both list prices from the makers’ own pages, and what three everyday jobs cost on each.
US dollars, standard rate, shortest context band. Price only: this page does not rank quality.
- GLM-5.3
- $5.96
- Kimi K3
- $15.00
- GLM-5.3, per M tokens
- $1.40 / $4.40
- Kimi K3, per M tokens
- $3 / $15
3,000 tokens in and 400 out each, at list price.
Per million tokens, GLM-5.3 costs $1.40 in and $4.40 out; Kimi K3 costs $3 in and $15 out. 1,000 support replies cost $15.00 on Kimi K3 and $5.96 on GLM-5.3, so Kimi K3 costs 2.5 times as much. GLM-5.3 reads up to 1M tokens at once, Kimi K3 up to 1.05M.
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.
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 | Kimi K3 | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support reply3,000 in, 400 out. | $5.96 | $15.00 | GLM-5.3, 60% less |
| Document summary25,000 in, 1,000 out. | $39.40 | $90.00 | GLM-5.3, 56% less |
| Agent task80,000 in (70,000 cached), 3,000 out. | $45.40 | $96.00 | GLM-5.3, 53% 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
- Cached-input storage is 'Limited-time Free'. Max output 128K. Open weights on Hugging Face (zai-org/GLM-5.3). Z.ai’s pricing page
- Kimi K3
- Cache write $3 (5 min TTL) or $6 (1 h TTL). Open weights on Hugging Face (moonshotai/Kimi-K3). Changelog gives the month only. Moonshot AI’s pricing page
Other comparisons
Every head to head on the list that involves GLM-5.3 or Kimi K3.
Run Kimi K3 for a quarter of list price
AIGROW API credit covers Kimi K3 and is metered at the list prices above: $25 buys $100 of usage.
Prices checked 22 September 2026