Claude Sonnet 5 vs GLM 5.3
Claude Sonnet 5 
GLM 5.3 Verdict
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) and GLM 5.3 (max) are level on quality (60.0 vs 60.0).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is stronger in agents & tools, composite, knowledge, long context, multimodal.
- GLM 5.3 (max) is stronger in coding, human preference, reasoning, maths.
- GLM 5.3 (max) is 1.9× cheaper ($2.15 vs $4.00 per 1M blended).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | GLM 5.3 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 60.0 | 60.0 |
| Agents & tools score | 60.8 | 52.8 |
| Coding score | 61.5 | 64.3 |
| Composite score | 63.4 | – |
| Human preference score | 65.9 | 68.9 |
| Knowledge score | 58.9 | 55.8 |
| Long context score | 62.1 | – |
| Multimodal score | 63.1 | – |
| Reasoning score | 66.5 | 66.9 |
| Maths score | – | 60.0 |
| Blended price $/M | $4.00 | $2.15 |
| Output speed | 68 tok/s | 66 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 1.8 s | 33.5 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| GPQA Diamond | – | 90.9% |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | – | 68.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | – | 29.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | – | 91.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | – | 41.0% |
| Terminal-Bench | – | 41.8% |
| SciCode | 48.6% | 56.5% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | 75.4% |
| ProofBench | – | 49.0% |
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1486 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1488 | 1509 |
| LMArena Coding | 1521 | 1526 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1537 | 1614 |
| LMArena Vision | 1278 | – |
| LMArena Agent | 5.9 | 2.6 |
| AA Intelligence Index | 32.0 | – |
| AA-LCR | 76.7% | – |
| AA-Omniscience | -3.7 | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 35.7% | – |
| SciCode (AA) | 54.3% | – |
| LiveCodeBench | – | 80.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | – | 86.8% |
| IOI | – | 68.4% |
| LegalBench | – | 84.8% |
| TaxEval | – | 72.4% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | – | 71.5% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | – | 95.4% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | – | 88.1% |
| Vals Index | – | 57.0 |
Data as of 2026-09-13. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Sonnet 5 vs GLM 5.3: questions
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than GLM 5.3?
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) and GLM 5.3 (max) are level on quality (60.0 vs 60.0). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; GLM 5.3 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-13, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than GLM 5.3 for coding?
- GLM 5.3 scores higher in coding (64 vs 62 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than GLM 5.3 for agentic tasks?
- Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in agentic tasks (61 vs 53 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or GLM 5.3?
- GLM 5.3 is cheaper: $2.15 against $4.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Sonnet 5 or GLM 5.3?
- Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster: 68 against 66 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Both accept 1M tokens of context.