GLM 5.3 vs Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20

GLM 5.3 leads Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 on coding, 70.6 to 39.5 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs 2.4x less per output token ($1.80 vs $4.40 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 16 benchmarks have a result for both.

Replace GLM 5.3 Replace Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20

GLM 5.3Z.ai

Coding: 70.6
Overall: 67.9
Output $/M: $4.40

Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20Qwen

Coding: 39.5
Overall: No data
Output $/M: $1.80

vs boards won of 16 shared

GLM 5.3 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: which to pick

Pick GLM 5.3 for coding: it scores 70.6 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.5 for Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20.

Pick Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 for output tokens 2.4x cheaper ($1.80 vs $4.40 per million) and work measured by LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) or MMLU Pro, where it leads.

Model AGLM 5.3Z.ai70.6/1006 independent benchmarks$0.36 per solved task Model BQwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20Qwen39.5/1002 independent benchmarks$1.35 per solved task

16849

Shared results: 16
GLM 5.3 only: 84
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 only: 9
Like-for-like categories: 7 of 9

Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.

Which one for your work

Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.

Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
GLM 5.3
GLM 5.3 scores 70.6 against 39.5.
6 and 2 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only GLM 5.3 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 44.8.
Directional only
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only GLM 5.3 has a AA Agentic Index result, 53.1.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
GLM 5.3
GLM 5.3 leads, 88.1% against 87.4%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
No call
Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 has a AIME result, 86.0%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 leads, 87.2% against 86.8%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only GLM 5.3 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1295.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
No call
Only GLM 5.3 has a Vals Index result, 59.7%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
GLM 5.3
GLM 5.3 takes 1.05M tokens against 1M.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
GLM 5.3 $0.0036, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $0.0012 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
GLM 5.3
GLM 5.3 $0.36, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $1.35.
Published attempt cost and pass rate

At a glance

Coding index: GLM 5.3 70.6 from 6 benchmarks, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 39.5 from 2 benchmarks.
Widest category: Agentic work, 51.0 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
Widest single gap: Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): GLM 5.3 78.1% against Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 15.7%, 62.4 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price: GLM 5.3 $4.40 against Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $1.80 per million output tokens, 2.4x apart.
Context window: GLM 5.3 takes 1.05M tokens, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 1M.

Benchmark by benchmark

First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.

Boards won, where both have a result
Category	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Coding	3	1
Intelligence	1	0
Agentic work	1	0
Reasoning	4	0
Math	1	0
Knowledge	1	2
General	2	0
All shared boards	13	3

CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index31

Coding benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
LiveBench coding	82.8%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena WebDev	1621	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
AA Coding Index	74.8	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)	80.5%	85.3%	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)	95.4%	71.2%	GLM 5.3
Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI)	38.9%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)	78.1%	15.7%	GLM 5.3
Code migration (Vals AI)	44.2%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
ProgramBench (Vals AI)	1.5%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
IOI (Vals AI)	68.4%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI)	71.5%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI)	20.0%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
SkillsBench (Vals AI)	47.5%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
CyberBench (Vals AI)	72.1%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
SciCode	59.0%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
FrontierCode	40.1%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
FrontierSWE	30.2%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
WeirdML	75.4%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
ALE-Bench	1317.4	608.9	GLM 5.3
LMArena Text: coding	1497	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: software and IT	1493	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena WebDev: React	1641	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena WebDev: HTML	1595	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 16 boards here

IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10

Intelligence benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
AA Intelligence Index	44.8	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Epoch Capabilities Index	156.0	146.2	GLM 5.3

Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10

Agentic work benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
AA Agentic Index	53.1	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: agents building mobile apps	1194	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: HTML slides	1189	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: PowerPoint slides	1230	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LiveBench research	73.2%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LiveBench browser	0.0%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LiveBench long agentic	35.9%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
SREBench (Vals AI)	9.2%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Finance Agent (Vals AI)	55.8%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI)	39.7%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Legal Research Bench (Vals AI)	49.0%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI)	14.6%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI)	56.3%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI)	5.7%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
APEX-Agents	56.6%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Vending-Bench 2	$8,164	$1	GLM 5.3
Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here

ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index40

Reasoning benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
GPQA Diamond	88.1%	87.4%	GLM 5.3
LiveBench reasoning	85.8%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
MysteryMechanism (Vals AI)	23.0%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)	Not measured	22.8%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)	91.7%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)	42.3%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)	90.9%	84.8%	GLM 5.3
Chess puzzles	37.0%	8.0%	GLM 5.3
Mystery game puzzles	33.0%	17.0%	GLM 5.3
LMArena Text: hard prompts	1490	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: expert	1514	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English	1496	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here

MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10

Math benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
AIME	Not measured	86.0%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
OTIS Mock AIME	91.1%	86.7%	GLM 5.3
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3	68.8%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
FrontierMath, tier 4	29.3%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
ProofBench	49.0%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: math	1495	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: mathematical work	1497	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here

KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12

Knowledge benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
MMLU Pro	86.8%	87.2%	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
LegalBench (Vals AI)	84.8%	85.1%	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
CaseLaw (Vals AI)	Not measured	59.7%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
CorpFin (Vals AI)	Not measured	65.3%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
TaxEval (Vals AI)	72.4%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
MortgageTax (Vals AI)	Not measured	60.8%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
MedQA (Vals AI)	Not measured	95.2%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
MedCode (Vals AI)	42.9%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
SimpleQA Verified	41.0%	25.4%	GLM 5.3
LMArena Text: science	1498	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare	1481	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: legal and government	1473	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: business and finance	1459	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here

Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared

Web design benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
Design Arena: websites	1295	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: UI components	1314	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: game dev	1311	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: data viz	1260	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: 3D	1332	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: all code categories	1304	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: SVG	1294	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Design Arena: ASCII art	1208	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LiveBench design	77.3%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured

GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20

General benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
Vals Index	59.7%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LiveBench data analysis	70.2%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI)	68.5%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
SAGE (Vals AI)	Not measured	30.4%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
MedScribe (Vals AI)	88.8%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)	79.7%	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
DTBench	87.7%	80.5%	GLM 5.3
LMCA	55.5%	36.4%	GLM 5.3
CL-bench	Not measured	19.8%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
CL-bench Life	Not measured	12.4%	Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured
LMArena Text	1474	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: instruction following	1479	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: creative writing	1458	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: English	1482	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: non-English	1459	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: Chinese	1532	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: German	1488	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: Japanese	1460	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: Korean	1460	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: French	1503	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: Spanish	1462	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: Russian	1469	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: Polish	1466	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: multi-turn	1472	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: longer queries	1483	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: writing and language	1469	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
LMArena Text: entertainment and media	1447	Not measured	Only GLM 5.3 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here

Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared

Image generation benchmarks for GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Benchmark	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20	Leader
Neither model has a result on 5 boards here

What each workload costs

Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.

Chat turn

1K input + 500 output tokens

GLM 5.3$0.0036Fits in one request

Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20$0.0012Fits in one request

Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

GLM 5.3$0.083Fits in one request

Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20$0.020Fits in one request

Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

GLM 5.3$0.324Fits in one request

Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20$0.078Fits in one request

Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs less

Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.

Specification differences

The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.

Specifications of GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Specification	Z.ai GLM 5.3	Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Maker	Z.ai	Qwen
Weights	Open weights	No public weights listed
Released	August 18, 2026	April 27, 2026
Context window	1.05M	1M
Input $/Mtok	$1.40	$0.30
Output $/Mtok	$4.40	$1.80
Coding index	70.6	39.5
Independent measurements behind it	6	2
Cost per solved task	$0.36	$1.35
Source	OpenRouter listing	OpenRouter listing

Questions

Is GLM 5.3 better than Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 for coding?

Pick GLM 5.3 for coding: it scores 70.6 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.5 for Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20. Pick Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 for output tokens 2.4x cheaper ($1.80 vs $4.40 per million) and work measured by LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) or MMLU Pro, where it leads.

Which is cheaper, GLM 5.3 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20?

GLM 5.3 costs $1.40 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs $0.30 and $1.80. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, GLM 5.3 costs $0.36 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $1.35.

Which has the bigger context window, GLM 5.3 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20?

GLM 5.3, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.

How many benchmarks is the GLM 5.3 vs Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 comparison based on?

16 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. GLM 5.3's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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GLM 5.3 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: which to pick

Which one for your work

Coding

Intelligence

Agentic work

Reasoning

Math

Knowledge

Web design

General

Long documents

Everyday cost

Cost per solved task

At a glance

Benchmark by benchmark

What each workload costs

Chat turn

Repository review

Agent loop

Specification differences

Questions

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