GLM 5.1 API Pricing
Zhipu · Mid-tier · Apache 2.0 · released 2026-04. Prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Data snapshot: 2026-09-28.
The price we publish for GLM 5.1 has changed 3 times since 2026-08-15, most recently by -0.1% on 2026-09-25; it is now the 39th cheapest of 108 Mid-tier models. None of its 14 hosts undercuts the price quoted here. It holds the FinOps Friendly badge: top-40% Arena quality, top-30% Efficiency, not among the dearest 30%, and no stability flag.
- Input: $0.96 per 1M tokens
- Output: $3.03 per 1M tokens
- Batch API (input/output): not published
- Prompt-cache read: $0.18
- Context window: 205K
- Arena ELO: 1465 (as of 2026-09-25)
- Available on: Direct API, OpenRouter (curated by hand, verify with the provider)
GLM 5.1 market position
On blended price ($2.41 per 1M tokens at 30% input, 70% output) it is cheaper than 64% of Mid-tier models: 39th cheapest of 108. Across every category it is cheaper than 36% of priced text models in the catalogue: 181st cheapest of 281. Its Arena ELO of 1465 ranks 20th of the 68 models that carry one, tied with 3 others, above 67% of them.
GLM 5.1 licence, size and capabilities
GLM 5.1 is open source: its weights are published under Apache 2.0, an OSI-approved licence with no field-of-use limit, so it can be self-hosted as well as bought by the token. Its parameter count is not published. Listed capabilities: Text, Reasoning, Code, Agents. Filling its 205K context window once costs $0.20 in input tokens at list price.
Monthly cost at 100K requests, by business use case
From the after-discounts figure (prompt caching on the cached input share, batch API for async workloads, only where the provider publishes those rates), which assumes you implement both, to the list price. One figure means no discount is published.
| Use case | Tokens (in/out) | Monthly (after discounts – list) |
|---|---|---|
| Support Ticket | 1,500 / 500 | $226 – $296 |
| Knowledge Q&A | 2,000 / 800 | $325 – $435 |
| Meeting Summary | 10,000 / 1,200 | $1.2K – $1.3K |
| Marketing Content | 2,500 / 1,800 | $748 – $787 |
| Coding Task | 3,000 / 2,000 | $778 – $896 |
| Invoice Processing | 1,500 / 600 | $291 – $327 |
| Call Summary | 2,000 / 700 | $389 – $405 |
| Agent Workflow | 6,000 / 3,000 | $1.2K – $1.5K |
GLM 5.1 pricing by host
A host is a company that runs the model and sells it by the token — the lab that made it, a cloud platform like Amazon Bedrock, Azure or Vertex, or an independent provider. One model, several sellers, and often several prices. This model is sold by 14 different hosts. The price quoted above is the one we publish so that models stay comparable; it is not necessarily the cheapest way to buy this model. List prices as published on 2026-09-28 via OpenRouter — negotiated rates, committed-use discounts and provisioned capacity are not shown. These hosts do not all serve the model at the same numeric precision, so the cheapest is not a like-for-like substitute for the dearest.
The price we publish is already the cheapest of the 14 hosts: Baidu at $0.96 input / $3.03 output per 1M tokens. It serves a quantized fp8 build, which is not the same product as the full-precision model. The dearest, Venice, charges 1.5x the cheapest.
| Host | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Baidu (the price shown above) — fp8 | $0.96 | $3.03 |
| StreamLake (the price shown above) — fp8 | $0.97 | $3.04 |
| Chutes (the price shown above) — fp8 | $0.98 | $3.08 |
| DeepInfra — fp4 | $1.05 | $3.50 |
| SiliconFlow — fp8 | $1.19 | $3.74 |
| AtlasCloud — fp8 | $1.26 | $3.96 |
| Phala | $1.21 | $4.20 |
| Alibaba — fp8 | $1.33 | $4.18 |
| Novita — fp8 | $1.38 | $4.40 |
| Nebius — fp8 | $1.40 | $4.40 |
| GMICloud — fp8 | $1.40 | $4.40 |
| Friendli | $1.40 | $4.40 |
| Z.AI — fp8 | $1.40 | $4.40 |
| Venice — fp8 | $1.40 | $4.40 |
GLM 5.1 price history
GLM 5.1 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $0.97 input / $3.04 output per 1M tokens. The price we publish has changed 3 times since then. The latest change, on 2026-09-25, was -0.1% on the blended price (30% input, 70% output), to $0.96 input / $3.03 output. Net of all changes, the blended price is -0.1% against 2026-08-15.
| Date | Old price (in / out) | New price (in / out) | Blended change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-25 | $0.97 / $3.04 | $0.96 / $3.03 | -0.1% |
| 2026-08-30 | $1.26 / $3.96 | $0.97 / $3.04 | -23.3% |
| 2026-08-25 | $0.97 / $3.04 | $1.26 / $3.96 | +30.4% |
Alternatives to GLM 5.1
- Next cheaper Mid-tier model: Relace Search (relace) at $2.40 blended, under 1% less.
- Next more expensive: Qwen3 Coder Plus (Alibaba) at $2.47 blended, 2% more.
The nearest Mid-tier models on Arena ELO, each with its blended price and score difference against GLM 5.1.
- GPT-5.6 Terra (OpenAI) — $2.00 in / $12.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1465: 273% more expensive, same Arena ELO
- Grok 4.5 (xAI) — $2.00 in / $6.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1465: 99% more expensive, same Arena ELO
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic) — $2.00 in / $10.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1462: 215% more expensive, 3 ELO points lower
- Kimi K2.6 (Moonshot) — $0.65 in / $3.41 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1461: 7% more expensive, 4 ELO points lower
- Cheapest within 15 Arena points: GLM 5.3 Flash (Zhipu), 84% cheaper, 9 ELO points higher, out of 25 models in that band.
- Highest Arena ELO within 20% of this price: Gemini 3.7 Flash (Google), 18% more expensive, 23 ELO points higher, out of 9 models in that price band.
Common questions about GLM 5.1 pricing
- How much does GLM 5.1 cost?
- GLM 5.1 costs $0.96 per million input tokens and $3.03 per million output tokens on the API.
- Does GLM 5.1 offer batch or cached pricing?
- Prompt-cache reads cost $0.18/M input tokens. No batch pricing is published.
- What would GLM 5.1 cost per month?
- For a support-ticket workload (1,500 input + 500 output tokens per request) at 100K requests/month, GLM 5.1 costs about $296 at list prices.
- Has the price of GLM 5.1 changed?
- GLM 5.1 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $0.97 input / $3.04 output per 1M tokens. The price we publish has changed 3 times since then. The latest change, on 2026-09-25, was -0.1% on the blended price (30% input, 70% output), to $0.96 input / $3.03 output. Net of all changes, the blended price is -0.1% against 2026-08-15.
These are list prices: real cost also depends on caching, batching, negotiated discounts, marketplace agreements, and existing contracts. Get a FinOps review from OptimNow or compare all models.
Build the business case for GLM 5.1 in the AI ROI Calculator: add your business value on top of these costs to get ROI, break-even and payback.
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