GLM 5.3 Prime API Pricing
Zhipu · Mid-tier · Apache 2.0 · released 2026-09. Prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Data snapshot: 2026-09-24.
GLM 5.3 Prime is the 81st cheapest of 105 Mid-tier models on blended price. Only one host, Alibaba, sells it, so there is no second price to shop. No Arena score is published for it, so it carries no Efficiency score and cannot hold the FinOps Friendly badge.
- Input: $2.80 per 1M tokens
- Output: $8.80 per 1M tokens
- Batch API (input/output): not published
- Prompt-cache read: $0.56
- Context window: 1M
GLM 5.3 Prime market position
On blended price ($7.00 per 1M tokens at 30% input, 70% output) it is cheaper than 23% of Mid-tier models: 81st cheapest of 105. Across every category it is cheaper than 20% of priced text models in the catalogue: 224th cheapest of 279.
- Next cheaper Mid-tier model: Gemini 3.5 Flash (Google) at $6.75 blended, 4% less.
- Next more expensive: Gemini 2.5 Pro (Google) at $7.38 blended, 5% more.
GLM 5.3 Prime licence, size and capabilities
GLM 5.3 Prime 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 1M context window once costs $2.80 in input tokens at list price.
Cost per 1,000 requests by business use case
List price vs after discounts (prompt caching on the cached input share, batch API for async workloads, only where the provider publishes those rates). The monthly budget runs from the after-discounts figure, which assumes you implement both, to the list-price one.
| Use case | Tokens (in/out) | Cost / 1K req (list price) | Cost / 1K req (after discounts) | Monthly @100K req (after discounts – list) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support Ticket | 1,500 / 500 | $8.60 | $6.58 | $658 – $860 |
| Knowledge Q&A | 2,000 / 800 | $12.64 | $9.50 | $950 – $1.3K |
| Meeting Summary | 10,000 / 1,200 | $38.56 | $36.32 | $3.6K – $3.9K |
| Marketing Content | 2,500 / 1,800 | $22.84 | $21.72 | $2.2K – $2.3K |
| Coding Task | 3,000 / 2,000 | $26.00 | $22.64 | $2.3K – $2.6K |
| Invoice Processing | 1,500 / 600 | $9.48 | $8.47 | $847 – $948 |
| Call Summary | 2,000 / 700 | $11.76 | $11.31 | $1.1K – $1.2K |
| Agent Workflow | 6,000 / 3,000 | $43.20 | $33.79 | $3.4K – $4.3K |
GLM 5.3 Prime 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 1 host. 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 2026-09-24 via OpenRouter — negotiated rates, committed-use discounts and provisioned capacity are not shown.
Alibaba is the only host with a published rate, $2.80 input / $8.80 output per 1M tokens, which is the price shown on this page.
| Host | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Alibaba (the price shown above) | $2.80 | $8.80 |
Common questions about GLM 5.3 Prime pricing
- How much does GLM 5.3 Prime cost?
- GLM 5.3 Prime costs $2.80 per million input tokens and $8.80 per million output tokens on the API.
- Does GLM 5.3 Prime offer batch or cached pricing?
- Prompt-cache reads cost $0.56/M input tokens. No batch pricing is published.
- What would GLM 5.3 Prime cost per month?
- For a support-ticket workload (1,500 input + 500 output tokens per request) at 100K requests/month, GLM 5.3 Prime costs about $860 at list prices.
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 5.3 Prime 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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