Qwen3.8-Max vs GLM-5.3

Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max and Zhipu AI's GLM-5.3 compared on specs, pricing, and capabilities — as configured in AI Crucible ensembles.

GLM-5.3 input tokens are 1.4x cheaper than Qwen3.8-Max ($1.68 vs $2.40 per 1M tokens).
GLM-5.3 output tokens are 1.4x cheaper than Qwen3.8-Max ($5.28 vs $7.20 per 1M tokens).
Qwen3.8-Max accepts image inputs; GLM-5.3 is text-only in AI Crucible.

Specification	Qwen3.8-Max	GLM-5.3
Provider	Alibaba	Zhipu AI
API model ID	qwen3.8-max	zai-org/GLM-5.3
Description	Alibaba's flagship Qwen3.8 model with 1M context, native thinking, and vision, at lower cost than Qwen3.7-Max.	Z.AI's frontier open-weight model for coding and agentic work, with always-on reasoning and 1M context.
Context window	1M tokens	1M tokens
Max output tokens	131,072	131,072
Input cost ($/1M tokens)	$2.40	$1.68
Output cost ($/1M tokens)	$7.20	$5.28
Cache read cost ($/1M tokens)	$0.30	$0.31
Latency	medium	medium
Reasoning model	Yes	Yes
Vision (image input)	Yes	No
Tool use	Yes	Yes