Z.ai and the GLM family
Z.ai is the Chinese company behind the GLM family, and its price list today carries fourteen text models and six vision models, three of which cost nothing. The flagship is GLM-5.2: a one million token window, up to 128K of output, at $1.4 in and $4.4 out.
- three free models on the price list
- coding plan from $18
- GLM-5.2 at one million tokens
Last checked: This is a reference page. It is re-checked against the vendor sources and updated when a new version ships. What changed
Model families
The GLM-5 line, whose three consecutive versions are all still on the price list.
Versions
| Versions | Released | Status | Model families |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM-5.2 Max | current | GLM-5 |
Three zero dollar rows, and none of them is the new generation
The Z.ai price list marks three models at zero: GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4.5-Flash and the vision model GLM-4.6V-Flash. No other maker in this group publishes a row like that, and for anyone who wants to try something without a foreign card it is the one open door.
The boundary matters as much as the offer. All three sit in the 4 generation, not the 5. The model that earns points in our coding table is GLM-5.2, and that one is not free. Free here buys you a trial, not a production stack.
A plan that sells credits instead of tokens
Alongside the API, Z.ai sells a coding plan starting at $18 a month across three tiers. The accounting is not the API accounting: it grants credits and imposes two ceilings at once, one over five hours and one over the week, and whichever fills first is the one that stops you. The entry tier carries 2,000 five-hour credits and 10,000 weekly credits. Off-peak usage is charged at half rate. The documentation puts the combined saving at up to 92 percent against API pricing.
That shape will be familiar to anyone on a Claude Code subscription, and the plan works with Claude Code, Cline and OpenCode. If your tool is one of those, moving is a change of key and endpoint.
Where this maker is genuinely candid, and where it is not
Z.ai documentation is the one place that shows the reasoning_effort parameter with the value max in plain sight. What looks like a model name on the Arena leaderboard is a setting here. That is why every page in this reference that needs to prove the claim links to this vendor.
Against that, none of the model guides carries a release date. From Z.ai own pages you cannot tell whether GLM-5 shipped months ago or GLM-5.2 shipped weeks ago. For a reference where everything else is dated, that gap is a nuisance.
What it is good at
- The only maker in this group with free models on its official price list: GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4.5-Flash and GLM-4.6V-Flash
- A coding plan from $18 a month that works with Claude Code, Cline and OpenCode
- A one million token window on GLM-5.2 with up to 128K of output
- A deep catalogue: fourteen text and six vision models with published prices, from $0.03 to $8.9
- Its documentation is the clearest source showing that max is an effort level and not a model
Where it falls short
- No model guide carries a release date, so the age of a version cannot be established from the vendor own sources.
- It publishes no supported-countries list, so our Iran column stays unchecked.
- Every free model is generation 4, not 5, so what is free is not what scores in our table.
- GLM-5.1 costs exactly what GLM-5.2 costs and carries a fifth of the context window. Staying on 5.1 has no price justification.
- The catalogue has no image or video generation model. Its vision models read images, they do not make them.
Our take
If you want to try something at no cost, or run Claude Code against a monthly budget, Z.ai is the most practical pick in this group. If you need to know how old your model is, you will have to find that somewhere other than the vendor.
Questions people actually ask
Is GLM-5.2 Max a separate model
No. Z.ai own documentation calls the model glm-5.2 and treats max as a value of the reasoning_effort parameter. The price and the context window belong to glm-5.2 itself.
Is the free Z.ai model enough for real work
For a trial yes, for production unlikely. All three free rows on the price list are generation 4 models, while the one that scores in our coding ranking is GLM-5.2, which has no zero dollar row.
What does the coding plan actually give you
The entry tier is $18 a month with 2,000 credits per five hours and 10,000 per week, and whichever ceiling fills first applies. Off-peak use is charged at half rate. The prices of the two higher tiers are not printed on that page.
Sources
- Z.ai pricing vendor source 12 August 2026
- Z.ai GLM-5.2 guide vendor source 12 August 2026
- Z.ai GLM-5.1 guide vendor source 12 August 2026
- Z.ai coding plan vendor source 12 August 2026