Key Terms
- GLM-5.3 - Zhipu's new flagship (launched August 17): same base model as GLM-5.2, all gains from post-training. Text-only, 1M context, 128K max output, always-thinking with low/high/max effort (default max, disabling thinking no longer supported - a breaking API change). Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
- GLM-5.3-Flash - first native multimodal GLM-5 model (August 31): 320B total / 18B active parameters, sparse + linear attention hybrid, 1M context, 128K output, native image/video/file input. Source: Aliyun – Newly Released Models
- Z.ai Code Bench - Zhipu's internal, non-public coding benchmark that places agents in complex local dev environments and measures end-to-end task completion; introduced with GLM-5.3 to avoid public-set contamination. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
- Credit-based Coding Plan - the GLM Coding Plan's token-transparent billing (per-model input/cached/output coefficients, exact 5-hour and weekly credit limits); off-peak hours including all-day weekends deduct 50% credits. GLM-5.3 is fully rolled out to the plan. Source: Bigmodel – Overview
- Vulnerability disclosure ledger - Zhipu's public ledger tracking vulnerabilities found by its models in real codebases, including affected projects, severity, CVE numbers, and age of the bug. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
- "OX Alpha" (unconfirmed) - an anonymous stealth model on OpenRouter (August 20) scoring 80% DeepSWE Pass@1 with 1M context and native multimodality; independent fingerprinting (Ben Davis, reported by Local AI Zone) estimates 99% likelihood it is Zhipu's unreleased GLM-5.x multimodal flagship (~744B total / ~40B active). Zhipu has not confirmed attribution. Source: Local-Ai-Zone – Ai Updates August 2026
Latest Changes
Changes since the 2026-07 report.
July watch items verified:
- GLM-5.3 launch: confirmed (was still-pending in July). GLM-5.3 launched August 17 with a technical report, full Coding Plan rollout, and SOTA claims on open-weight models for Terminal-Bench 3.0 and Agents' Last Exam. Sources: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 , Z – Glm 5.3
- Reward-hacking guard / cyber capability disclosures: partial. No new guard evaluations, but GLM-5.3's launch material discloses extensive new cyber-capability data (below) and a coordinated disclosure program for found vulnerabilities. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
- Off-peak 50% credit deduction: confirmed continuing. The Coding Plan keeps 50% credit deduction in off-peak hours including weekends. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
New August changes:
- New flagship (Aug 17): GLM-5.3, same base as GLM-5.2 with post-training gains: Z.ai Code Bench +50% vs GLM-5.2; Terminal-Bench 3.0 4.6 to 28.3; DeepSWE v1.1 46.2 to 66.9; Agents' Last Exam 23.8 to 28.5. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
- Emergent cyber capability (Aug 17): CyberGym 84.5% (best recorded, above Mythos 5 at 83.8% and GPT-5.6 Sol at 83.6%); ExploitBench 54.4% vs GLM-5.2's 24.4% (Mythos 5: 78.0%); ExploitGym 105 exploits in 2 hours (Mythos 5: 181). In real-world testing with Chinese security teams: 2,436 vulnerabilities found in 269 projects, 1,097 medium-or-high severity, the oldest latent for ~40 years, now tracked in a public disclosure ledger. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
- New model (Aug 31): GLM-5.3-Flash, first multimodal GLM-5 (320B/18B active), listed on Alibaba Bailian the same day; the z.ai homepage now brands itself "powered by GLM-5.3-Flash." Sources: Aliyun – Newly Released Models , Z
- Breaking API change: GLM-5.3 cannot disable thinking;
thinking.type: "disabled"requests fail - migrate toenabledwithreasoning_effort: low. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 - Protocol support: GLM-5.3 endpoints span OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Message protocols (Claude Code-compatible); Coding Plan subscribers are temporarily limited to the OpenAI Chat Completions protocol. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
- Marketplace distribution: GLM-5.3 and GLM-5.3-Flash added to Alibaba Bailian (Aug 17 / Aug 31). Source: Aliyun – Newly Released Models
- Unconfirmed stealth model: "OX Alpha" on OpenRouter (Aug 20-27 free preview), fingerprinted as a probable unreleased Zhipu multimodal flagship. Not officially attributed. Source: Local-Ai-Zone – Ai Updates August 2026
Plans
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| GLM Coding Plan Lite | $16.2/mo (reg. $18) | Credit-based; GLM-5.3 included; off-peak 50% deduction |
| GLM Coding Plan Pro | $64.8/mo (reg. $72) | Higher credit limits |
| GLM Coding Plan Max | $144/mo (reg. $160) | Highest limits |
| Team Edition | Custom | Central member/budget/permission management |
USD prices carried over from July's ZCode listing; CNY domestic pricing separately maintained. Source: Zcode , Bigmodel – Overview
API Pricing
GLM-5.3 per-token API rates are published on the bigmodel.cn pricing pages with per-model credit coefficients in the Coding Plan docs; GLM-5.2's July rates (and the ~$1.40/$4.40 per MTok reference price seen on third-party platforms) carried over without a listed increase for 5.3 on the docs page fetched. Exact GLM-5.3 per-MTok rates: see Bigmodel – Overview for credit coefficients and Zhipu AI pricing for token rates.
Model Performance / Benchmarks
| Benchmark | GLM-5.3 | GLM-5.2 | Reference | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Z.ai Code Bench (max effort) | 34.5% @ ~75K out-tokens/task | 23.4% @ ~96K | Fable 5: 39.5% | Internal, non-public. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
| Z.ai Code Bench (high effort) | 31.4% @ ~50K | - | Opus 4.8: 29.5% @ ~120K | Beats Opus 4.8 with ~42% of the tokens. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 28.3 | 4.6 | - | Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | 66.9 | 46.2 | - | Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
| Agents' Last Exam (CLI) | 28.5 | 23.8 | - | Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
| CyberGym | 84.5% | 77.2% | Mythos 5: 83.8%; GPT-5.6 Sol: 83.6% | Best recorded score. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
| ExploitBench | 54.4% | 24.4% | Mythos 5: 78.0%; GPT-5.6 Sol: 76.5% | Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
| ExploitGym (2h / 6h) | 105 / 130 tasks | 29 / 39 | Mythos 5: 181 / 247 | Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
Latest News
GLM-5.3: Post-Training Leap (August 17, 2026)
GLM-5.3 keeps GLM-5.2's base weights and gains entirely from scaled post-training, including end-to-end synthesized task environments with verified binary reward signals. The efficiency story is the headline: at high effort it beats Claude Opus 4.8's internal-bench accuracy while emitting ~42% of the output tokens, and it closes most of the open-weight gap on terminal and deep-SWE benchmarks. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
Security Capability Emergence and Disclosure Program (August 2026)
Zhipu reports that vulnerability-exploitation capability grew faster than anticipated during post-training, documents the gap to Mythos 5 honestly, and has moved to a public vulnerability-disclosure ledger covering 2,436 real findings. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3
OX Alpha: Stealth Preview Fingerprinted to Zhipu (August 20, 2026)
An anonymous model topping DeepSWE at 80% Pass@1 ran free on OpenRouter for a week; technical fingerprinting (tokenizer alignment with GLM-5.3, video-encoder token patterns matching GLM-5V-Turbo) points to an unreleased Zhipu multimodal flagship. Unconfirmed by Zhipu. Source: Local-Ai-Zone – Ai Updates August 2026
Community Signals
Aggregator coverage of GLM-5.3's launch framed it as the open-weight model closest to the cyber frontier and a token-efficiency leader; the OX Alpha mystery drew significant independent analysis. Source: Local-Ai-Zone – Ai Updates August 2026 . July's community benchmarks (Colibri on 32GB RAM, Martin Alderson's margin-collapse analysis, VAT benchmark) remain the standing third-party evidence for GLM-5.2 economics; no comparable third-party GLM-5.3 test has published yet. Sources: News – Item , Martinalderson – The Upcoming Ai Margin Collapse Part 1 Glm 5 2
Enterprise Readiness
| Feature | Available? | Details |
|---|---|---|
| SSO (SAML) | No | Not documented (Team Edition has central management only). |
| SCIM | No | Not documented. |
| Audit logs | No | Not documented. |
| IP indemnity | No | Not documented. |
| Data residency | No | Not documented; international endpoint at open.bigmodel.cn. |
| HIPAA | No | Not advertised. |
| Air-gapped / on-prem | Partial | GLM-5.2 open weights enable self-hosting; GLM-5.3 weights not confirmed released. |
| SLA | No | Not published. |
| Admin controls (RBAC) | Partial | Team Edition member/budget/permission management. Source: Bigmodel – Overview |
| Anthropic-protocol compatibility | Yes | Native Anthropic Message endpoint enables Claude Code/Codex integration. Source: Bigmodel – Glm 5.3 |
Transparency Gaps
| Gap | Details | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| GLM-5.3 API price | Per-MTok rates for glm-5.3 are not on the model docs page; only Coding Plan credit coefficients are public. | High |
| Z.ai Code Bench | The headline +50% and Opus-beating claims rest on a non-public internal benchmark. | High |
| OX Alpha attribution | If Zhipu's, the stealth-release strategy bypasses benchmark accountability entirely; attribution remains unconfirmed. | Medium |
| Exploit capability governance | GLM-5.3 doubles exploit-bench scores with no published usage policy for offensive-security work (unlike Anthropic's CVP and OpenAI's Daybreak). | Medium |
| Thinking always-on | The removal of non-thinking mode raises cost per simple query; no discount tier is documented for low-effort calls. | Low |