GLM-5.3 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro
GLM-5.3 costs $1.40 / $4.40 and DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $1.32 / $3.96 per million input / output tokens. At a typical 3:1 mix, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 1.1× cheaper than GLM-5.3.
GLM-5.3
Z.ai
Input
$1.40
per 1M
Output
$4.40
per 1M
Cached
$0.26
1M context
Input
$1.32
per 1M
Output
$3.96
per 1M
Cached
$0.044
1M context
Side by side
Green marks the cheaper price, larger context window, bigger discount or higher score.
| Detail | GLM-5.3 | DeepSeek V4 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Input per 1M | $1.40 | $1.32 |
| Output per 1M | $4.40 | $3.96 |
| Blended per 1M (3:1) | $2.15 | $1.98 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.26 | $0.044 |
| Batch or off-peak discount | None | 50% (off-peak) |
| Long prompts | Same rate at any length | Same rate at any length |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Released | 14 Aug 2026 | 24 Apr 2026 |
| Open weights | No | Yes |
| Verified | 27 Sep 2026 | 27 Sep 2026 |
Sources: Z.ai pricing and DeepSeek pricing.
Monthly cost on three workloads
List prices, no batch discount. The cached share applies where a model has a cache rate.
| Workload | GLM-5.3 | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer chat assistant50,000 conversations a month, about 2,000 tokens in and 400 out each; 50% cached | $171 | $147 | $23.60 |
| Document Q&A (RAG)20,000 questions a month over retrieved documents, 12,000 in and 600 out; 30% cached | $307 | $272 | $34.27 |
| Coding agent400 tasks a month, 40 steps each with a growing context; 85% cached | $358 | $208 | $150 |
How they differ
- DeepSeek V4 Pro is cheaper on input ($1.32 vs $1.40).
- DeepSeek V4 Pro is cheaper on output ($3.96 vs $4.40), which matters most for long answers and reasoning models.
- Cached input is cheaper on DeepSeek V4 Pro ($0.044 vs $0.26), which favours agents and chat apps that resend the same context.
- DeepSeek V4 Pro has open weights, so you can also run it yourself or choose between hosts.
Recent changes
All changes- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash replaced V4 Flash at $0.30 / $1.20 peak ($0.15 / $0.60 off-peak).
Qwen3.8 Flash ($0.15 / $0.47) and GLM-5.3 Flash ($0.15 / $0.50) launched.- DeepSeek V4 Pro moved to peak and off-peak pricing: $1.32 / $3.96 at peak, down from $1.74 on input and up from $3.48 on output.
- Z.ai launched GLM-5.3 at $1.40 / $4.40.
- DeepSeek discontinued the deepseek-chat (V3.2) and deepseek-reasoner (R1) endpoints.
