GLM-5.3-Flash
A distilled, low-latency sibling of GLM-5.3 tuned for high-throughput everyday work. It keeps much of the family's instruction-following at a fraction of the flagship price.
At a glance
Released
Sep 18, 2026
Provider
Zhipu AI
Context window
128,000 tokens
Max output
32,000 tokens
Modalities
Text → text
Knowledge cutoff
June 2026
API model ID
glm-5.3-flashLicense
Open weights (MIT)
Pricing
Standard
Input$0.15 / 1M
Output$0.50 / 1M
A typical 1,500-token prompt with a 650-token answer costs ≈ $0.0005 on the standard tier. Run your own prompt through the calculator →
What's new vs the previous model
Compared withGLM-4.7-Flash (May 2026)
- Better reasoning and formatting than GLM-4.7-Flash
- Carries the newer June 2026 knowledge cutoff
- No longer free to call, unlike the 4.7-Flash it descends from
Best use cases
Chat and support
Handles high volumes of routine conversations at low latency.
Classification
Tags, routes, and extracts structured fields cheaply at scale.
Drafting
Produces first-pass copy and summaries quickly for human review.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Very low latency
- Cheap per token
- Open weights
Limitations
- Weaker on hard multi-step reasoning
- Smaller context than the flagship
How to test it
- No-code: open chat.z.ai and pick GLM-5.3-Flash from the model switcher — no API key needed.
- Playground: sign in to the Z.ai API console and run prompts in the workbench, then copy the generated code.
- API: create a key in the Z.ai API console and call the API (example below).
curl https://api.z.ai/api/paas/v4/chat/completions \
# OpenAI-compatible endpoint
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "glm-5.3-flash",
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain tokenization in one paragraph."}]
}'