LOADING DATASHEET
GROUNDED IN REAL HUMAN CONVERSATIONSYOUR BENCH
GLM 5.3
◆ OPEN
by Zhipu
OPEN WEIGHTSHOSTEDCODING HELPFAST ANSWERSPROBLEM SOLVINGWRITING HELP
RANKED #4 OF 266 ASSISTANTS · OVERALL #4 OF 6,544 · VIBE SCORE 7.5 · 9,676 VOICES
A fast and affordable AI model designed to help with coding and everyday problem solving.
HAPPY9.7
1.2k mentions
SAD5.3
138 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 13,063 voices
QUIETLY DEGRADING
Recent vibe and chatter are both sliding.
HOW TO USE IT
Open weights. You can use a hosted service, or download it and run it yourself, free.
RUN IT ON YOUR OWN MACHINE
Open weights: download GLM 5.3 once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
744B parameters (MoE with 40B active), a Q4 quantized file requires about 420 GB memory
- BARE MINIMUM
Apple Mac Studio M2 Ultra
192 GB UNIFIED RAM
~$4,200 USEDToo big for typical consumer hardware; runs extreme 2-bit quants (IQ2_XS) with slow offload, ~4 tok/s, short context
- SWEET SPOT
Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra
512 GB UNIFIED RAM
~$7,500 NEWQ4 quantization, ~12 tok/s, 32k context
- FULL POWER
Multi-GPU Workstation with 8x NVIDIA RTX 4090
192 GB VRAM PLUS 512 GB RAM
~$15,000 CUSTOM BUILDDistributed Q4 or AWQ tensor-parallel inference, ~35 tok/s, up to 128k context
LEARN HOW TO SET IT UP
WILL MY BOX RUN GLM 5.3?
The three cards above are researched picks. Search the machine you actually have — we only say yes if it should reply at a usable speed, not just load the weights and crawl.
HARDWARE PICKS & PRICES ARE RESEARCHED FROM THE LIVE WEB AND REFRESHED AUTOMATICALLY. TREAT THEM AS BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH IT?
Everyday jobs on each of those rigs: how long GLM 5.3 takes, and how good the crowd says it is at that kind of work.
| THE JOB | BARE MINIMUMApple Mac Studio M2 Ultra | SWEET SPOTApple Mac Studio M3 Ultra | FULL POWERMulti-GPU Workstation with 8x NVIDIA RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write an emaila paragraph or two, drafted from a one-line brief | ~2.1 MIN★★★★★ | ~42 S★★★★★ | ~14 S★★★★★ |
| Summarize a documenta long report boiled down to the points that matter | ~6.3 MIN★★★★★ | ~2.1 MIN★★★★★ | ~43 S★★★★★ |
| Build a websitea small landing page, markup and styles together | ~33 MIN★★★★★ | ~11 MIN★★★★★ | ~3.8 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a backendan API with routes, storage and tests | ~1.7 HR★★★★★ | ~35 MIN★★★★★ | ~12 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a gamea playable browser game in one file | ~63 MIN★★★★★ | ~21 MIN★★★★★ | ~7.1 MIN★★★★★ |
STARS ARE THE COMMUNITY SCORE FOR THAT KIND OF WORK, DOCKED FOR HOW SQUASHED THE WEIGHTS GET AT EACH TIER. TIMES ARE COMPUTED FROM RESEARCHED SPEEDS. BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT THE INTERNET SAYS
Users love GLM 5.3 for its fast, accurate answers and strong coding skills at a great price. However, some complain about frequent outages, usage limits, and a tendency to lecture or refuse requests.
3199 POSTS · 6477 COMMENTS · X · BLUESKY · REDDIT · HACKER NEWS · GITHUB · LEMMY · DEV.TO · BLOG
PEOPLE LOVE
- Popular for coding help (69 mentions)
- People feel it is worth the money (34 mentions)
- Usually gives correct answers (13 mentions)
- Answers come back fast (13 mentions)
PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
- Outages, errors, or limits get in the way (19 mentions)
- Refuses or lectures more than people like (10 mentions)
TOPIC BY TOPIC
- Help with codePEOPLE LOVE THIS
69 thumbs up · 7 thumbs down
- PriceMOSTLY POSITIVE
34 thumbs up · 15 thumbs down
- Working when you need itA SORE SPOT
9 thumbs up · 19 thumbs down
- Getting facts rightMOSTLY POSITIVE
13 thumbs up · 7 thumbs down
- SpeedMOSTLY POSITIVE
13 thumbs up · 5 thumbs down
- Saying no too muchA SORE SPOT
2 thumbs up · 10 thumbs down
- WritingPEOPLE LOVE THIS
4 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
- FROM X >
“GLM 5.3 is the newest member to the cost-accuracy pareto for Terminal-Bench 3.0, replacing Grok 4.6 Impressive improveme.”
- FROM X >
“🚨 GLM 5.3 absolutely cooked Qwen3.8 Max 😭 Qwen 3.8 Max returned basically a black screen And somehow Qwen cost me ~11×.”
- FROM X >
“The GLM 5.3 API just went live, and it got so good at finding weak spots in code that the makers paused the download.”
- FROM X >
“idk what they did with GLM 5.3 but this thing feels insanely fast compared to Fable 5 and GPT-5.6.”
LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE?
Checked picks first: tags say why you would switch, stars say how fully each one stands in for GLM 5.3.
DeepSeek V4 Pro
Grok 4.6
Qwen3.8 27B> SOURCES (12)
- X · 2026-08-14 · 1706 UPVOTESWe gave GLM‑5.3 a complex reverse-engineering task. It found a potentially serious vulnerability in Cursor. We disclosed
We gave GLM‑5.3 a complex reverse-engineering task. It found a potentially serious vulnerability in Cursor. We disclosed
- X · 2026-08-18 · 1374 UPVOTESGLM-5.3 API is now live. - Built for coding, defensive cybersecurity, and long-horizon agentic tasks - Priced the same a
GLM-5.3 API is now live. - Built for coding, defensive cybersecurity, and long-horizon agentic tasks - Priced the same a
- X · 2026-08-19 · 1318 UPVOTESThoughts About Scaling Law Scaling, but not only of parameters. Every model release now ends with the same question: how
Thoughts About Scaling Law Scaling, but not only of parameters. Every model release now ends with the same question: how
- X · 2026-08-14 · 1296 UPVOTES2 things are happening at once: - AI coding models are converging. For 95% of tasks, most people can’t tell whether GPT-
2 things are happening at once: - AI coding models are converging. For 95% of tasks, most people can’t tell whether GPT-
- X · 2026-08-18 · 1180 UPVOTESGLM-5.3 achieves 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Kimi K3 and up 7 points from GLM-5.2. Onc
GLM-5.3 achieves 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Kimi K3 and up 7 points from GLM-5.2. Onc
- HACKER NEWS · 2026-08-14 · 1144 UPVOTESGLM-5.3: Frontier coding with emergent cyber capabilities
GLM-5.3: Frontier coding with emergent cyber capabilities
- X · 2026-08-14 · 922 UPVOTESGLM-5.3 has released, beating Fable & the new DeepSeek V4-Pro 0813 from just yesterday on Terminal-Bench. It used GL
GLM-5.3 has released, beating Fable & the new DeepSeek V4-Pro 0813 from just yesterday on Terminal-Bench. It used GL
- X · 2026-08-15 · 893 UPVOTESQuick tip: download the open models you care about from Hugging Face as soon as you can. You never know what the next fe
Quick tip: download the open models you care about from Hugging Face as soon as you can. You never know what the next fe
- X · 2026-08-14 · 811 UPVOTESLocal AI hardware guide : ~$2k : rtx3090 desktop with Qwen3.8-27b ~$4k : DGX Spark with Deepseek-V4-Flash 2.5bit ~$7k :
Local AI hardware guide : ~$2k : rtx3090 desktop with Qwen3.8-27b ~$4k : DGX Spark with Deepseek-V4-Flash 2.5bit ~$7k :
- X · 2026-08-14 · 704 UPVOTESGLM-5.3 is available now through GLM Coding Plan and ZCode. API access and open weights will be released in stages follo
GLM-5.3 is available now through GLM Coding Plan and ZCode. API access and open weights will be released in stages follo
- REDDIT · 2026-08-14 · 636 UPVOTESGLM 5.3 finds 2436 unpatched open source vulnerabilities likely missed by Mythos (Project Glasswing)
GLM 5.3 finds 2436 unpatched open source vulnerabilities likely missed by Mythos (Project Glasswing)
- X · 2026-08-14 · 557 UPVOTESPeople are seriously sleeping on GLM-5.3 right now. At just 743B parameters, it basically matches the performance of mod
People are seriously sleeping on GLM-5.3 right now. At just 743B parameters, it basically matches the performance of mod