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GLM 5.2 has one big issue that will limit its meaningful success and that's the value of their coding subscription. Yes, in terms of API pricing, GLM 5.2 outpe

by pietz 4mo ago

GLM 5.2 has one big issue that will limit its meaningful success and that's the value of their coding subscription. Yes, in terms of API pricing, GLM 5.2 outperforms the competition. But the only people that use API billing for their coding work are large corporations, where these highly subsidized subscriptions are being fazed out. At the same time, none of these companies will use a Chinese API for their employees. For individuals and smaller teams, Z.ai's coding subscription is outperformed by Anthropic and OpenAI. You probably get around the same usage with Claude, but Codex definitely offers more usage for the amount you pay. We can have a debate how much Z.ai closed the gap to GPT5.5 and Opus 4.8, but if I can freely decide between them in a world where they all cost the same, I simply wouldn't choose GLM. So the important question becomes: How good will the offering from Z.ai get with GLM 5.3 or 6 and how much will OpenAI and Anthropic cripple their current offering in the near future.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
Certhas 4mo ago
My impression is that individual subscriptions are the loss leading hook. The money is made on Enterprise token contracts. Employees and students used to coding with thousands of dollars worth of tokens (on a 20/100 dollar plan) will push enterprise to spend. Having a Chinese model that is competitive won't displace this enterprise spend. But an open model hosted in the US/EU might. The existence of GLM 5.2 puts a ceiling on how much OpenAI/Anthropic can charge for API Access.
- pietz 4mo ago
  To be clear, I agree with this and they have my unlimited support pushing for relevance of open source models. GLM 5.2 is amazing and I couldn't be more excited. I just think that as of today, most people will not find a good reason to switch to GLM.
- LUmBULtERA 4mo ago
  > My impression is that individual subscriptions are the loss leading hook Except there is no evidence of this at all, just people comparing API and subscription pricing. The leaked financial info for OpenAI shows inference is profitable right now, though it does not show a distinction between subscription and API revenue... but if subscription revenue was so lossy, it would hard for total inference to still be profitable.
  - Certhas 4mo ago
    I did clearly say "my impression is". And you have no evidence to the contrary. We don't even reliably in w how many subscribers Vs enterprise customers they have. And the OpenAI leak doesn't even cleanly say that inference is profitable from what I can tell... The better evidence that it probably is are the prices charged by open weight model providers.
    - LUmBULtERA 4mo ago
      Fair enough, there is not strong specific evidence to the contrary except about overall inference being profitable for OpenAI (as well as the open weight model providers hosted throughout the world).
  - CuriouslyC 4mo ago
    Anthropic has indicated in the past that API gross margins are ~60%. This might have improved since then, though competition from OAI puts a ceiling on that.
    - LUmBULtERA 4mo ago
      Subscription inference can also be cheaper than the cost of API inference if the provider wants it to -- providers can do flexible scheduling for subscription inference for example, around API inference, to lower its cost and get better utilization of the hardware.
- fbnszb 4mo ago
  > The existence of GLM 5.2 puts a ceiling on how much OpenAI/Anthropic can charge for API Access. I believe this is the reason why we can even have this debate. Without this kind of competition we would not have these subsidies.
edg5000 4mo ago
This is an important point. I suspect API pricing will eventually disappear just like how paying for an MMS disappeared. It's an antiquated model. The bulk of the work is being done on "coding plans" is my wild guess. It's annoying that the plans are so restrictive beyond usage limits. Understandable maybe, but annoying. In practice, only Anthropic (and maybe Google) are really restrictive though. They really scared me away with their policy of charging API rates after the fact if they consider your usage not TOS-aligned. This might be an ungrounded fear that I have, but I feel this is something they'd do so they scared me away.
twobitshifter 4mo ago
Taking a view from outside the USA, European companies just had Fable taken away due to US export controls, and before that Anthropic announced it is holding their data for 30 days. There is immediate value to these firms to build their infrastructure around an AI that won’t be pulled away from them. And outside of Europe, other countries are more price sensitive and don’t have the same fear of building relationships with Chinese companies.
- SubiculumCode 4mo ago
  And you have that guarantee from Xi?
  - bornfreddy 4mo ago
    With openweights? Yes. It might halucinate a backdoor somewhere ( not that you can trust any model about that), but it will still work.
  - Lutger 4mo ago
    You don't need no guarantee nor even trust if you have openweights, that's the beauty of it. The real question is: what guarantee do we have from Trump that he won't pull away the software (and hardware) our society is built on? Previously we could pretend to rely on the international order as shaped by the US itself, and as an extension on the guarantees of the US president. But with Trump, even Xi sounds like a standup guy. So as Europe, we must scramble to disentangle the core of our societies from AWS, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. etc.
- WarmWash 4mo ago
  There is no such thing as a relationship with "chinese companies". In China there is just the State, and that is it. If the world needs any more evidence of Europe's short-sightedness, it would be them running to China to spite the US (instead of creating fertile grounds for their own tech).
  - metobehonest 4mo ago
jauntywundrkind 4mo ago
I'm on glm pro subscription and I get so so so much more usage than Claude or Codex! I hammer on glm all day. It's a more expensive plan, but I would need a much much much bigger plan for codex or Claude to do what I do.
tpm 4mo ago
Also, I was testing out the GLM 5.2 using Openrouter because that's where I've got an account with some money and then when I wanted to perhaps subscribe for a better deal at z.ai, their infra was clearly overloaded to the point the 5.2 was timing out on 100% of chat requests, so perhaps I will try later when the infrastructure catches up with the model capability. Only then I can make sure their subscription is worth it.
HarHarVeryFunny 4mo ago
> But the only people that use API billing for their coding work are large corporations As well as people using 3rd party harnesses like OpenCode. > At the same time, none of these companies will use a Chinese API for their employees So who are Amazon Bedrock (who serve GLM) targetting? Individuals are presumably going with one of the cheaper US providers such as DeepInfra ($0.18/M cached input for GLM vs $0.50 for Opus) or Fireworks AI.
tw1984 4mo ago
> At the same time, none of these companies will use a Chinese API for their employees. nice try but you intentionally ignored the entire Chinese market & Chinese big corporates. there are 130 Chinese companies in the fortune 500 list, with an average revenue of 80 billion USD each. do you think they are going to sign up for Claude, Codex or GLM? now consider South East Asia, Africa, Middle East, Middle Asia and South America, tell me why their large corporates won't be using GLM API billings? your western centric view of the world is totally out of date, like it or not, 2026 is vastly different from 1996, the US no longer controls high tech whatsoever.
veber-alex 4mo ago
The value of these models is that you can run them on your own hardware. A company can buy a NVIDIA B300 and serve it's developers in house with unlimited tokens.

by pietz 4mo ago

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

Certhas 4mo ago

My impression is that individual subscriptions are the loss leading hook. The money is made on Enterprise token contracts. Employees and students used to coding with thousands of dollars worth of tokens (on a 20/100 dollar plan) will push enterprise to spend. Having a Chinese model that is competitive won't displace this enterprise spend. But an open model hosted in the US/EU might. The existence of GLM 5.2 puts a ceiling on how much OpenAI/Anthropic can charge for API Access.

pietz 4mo ago
To be clear, I agree with this and they have my unlimited support pushing for relevance of open source models. GLM 5.2 is amazing and I couldn't be more excited. I just think that as of today, most people will not find a good reason to switch to GLM.
LUmBULtERA 4mo ago
> My impression is that individual subscriptions are the loss leading hook Except there is no evidence of this at all, just people comparing API and subscription pricing. The leaked financial info for OpenAI shows inference is profitable right now, though it does not show a distinction between subscription and API revenue... but if subscription revenue was so lossy, it would hard for total inference to still be profitable.
- Certhas 4mo ago
  I did clearly say "my impression is". And you have no evidence to the contrary. We don't even reliably in w how many subscribers Vs enterprise customers they have. And the OpenAI leak doesn't even cleanly say that inference is profitable from what I can tell... The better evidence that it probably is are the prices charged by open weight model providers.
  - LUmBULtERA 4mo ago
    Fair enough, there is not strong specific evidence to the contrary except about overall inference being profitable for OpenAI (as well as the open weight model providers hosted throughout the world).
- CuriouslyC 4mo ago
  Anthropic has indicated in the past that API gross margins are ~60%. This might have improved since then, though competition from OAI puts a ceiling on that.
  - LUmBULtERA 4mo ago
    Subscription inference can also be cheaper than the cost of API inference if the provider wants it to -- providers can do flexible scheduling for subscription inference for example, around API inference, to lower its cost and get better utilization of the hardware.
fbnszb 4mo ago
> The existence of GLM 5.2 puts a ceiling on how much OpenAI/Anthropic can charge for API Access. I believe this is the reason why we can even have this debate. Without this kind of competition we would not have these subsidies.

edg5000 4mo ago

This is an important point. I suspect API pricing will eventually disappear just like how paying for an MMS disappeared. It's an antiquated model. The bulk of the work is being done on "coding plans" is my wild guess. It's annoying that the plans are so restrictive beyond usage limits. Understandable maybe, but annoying. In practice, only Anthropic (and maybe Google) are really restrictive though. They really scared me away with their policy of charging API rates after the fact if they consider your usage not TOS-aligned. This might be an ungrounded fear that I have, but I feel this is something they'd do so they scared me away.

twobitshifter 4mo ago

Taking a view from outside the USA, European companies just had Fable taken away due to US export controls, and before that Anthropic announced it is holding their data for 30 days. There is immediate value to these firms to build their infrastructure around an AI that won’t be pulled away from them. And outside of Europe, other countries are more price sensitive and don’t have the same fear of building relationships with Chinese companies.

SubiculumCode 4mo ago
And you have that guarantee from Xi?
- bornfreddy 4mo ago
  With openweights? Yes. It might halucinate a backdoor somewhere ( not that you can trust any model about that), but it will still work.
- Lutger 4mo ago
  You don't need no guarantee nor even trust if you have openweights, that's the beauty of it. The real question is: what guarantee do we have from Trump that he won't pull away the software (and hardware) our society is built on? Previously we could pretend to rely on the international order as shaped by the US itself, and as an extension on the guarantees of the US president. But with Trump, even Xi sounds like a standup guy. So as Europe, we must scramble to disentangle the core of our societies from AWS, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. etc.
WarmWash 4mo ago
There is no such thing as a relationship with "chinese companies". In China there is just the State, and that is it. If the world needs any more evidence of Europe's short-sightedness, it would be them running to China to spite the US (instead of creating fertile grounds for their own tech).
- metobehonest 4mo ago

jauntywundrkind 4mo ago

I'm on glm pro subscription and I get so so so much more usage than Claude or Codex! I hammer on glm all day. It's a more expensive plan, but I would need a much much much bigger plan for codex or Claude to do what I do.

tpm 4mo ago

Also, I was testing out the GLM 5.2 using Openrouter because that's where I've got an account with some money and then when I wanted to perhaps subscribe for a better deal at z.ai, their infra was clearly overloaded to the point the 5.2 was timing out on 100% of chat requests, so perhaps I will try later when the infrastructure catches up with the model capability. Only then I can make sure their subscription is worth it.

HarHarVeryFunny 4mo ago

> But the only people that use API billing for their coding work are large corporations As well as people using 3rd party harnesses like OpenCode. > At the same time, none of these companies will use a Chinese API for their employees So who are Amazon Bedrock (who serve GLM) targetting? Individuals are presumably going with one of the cheaper US providers such as DeepInfra ($0.18/M cached input for GLM vs $0.50 for Opus) or Fireworks AI.

tw1984 4mo ago

> At the same time, none of these companies will use a Chinese API for their employees. nice try but you intentionally ignored the entire Chinese market & Chinese big corporates. there are 130 Chinese companies in the fortune 500 list, with an average revenue of 80 billion USD each. do you think they are going to sign up for Claude, Codex or GLM? now consider South East Asia, Africa, Middle East, Middle Asia and South America, tell me why their large corporates won't be using GLM API billings? your western centric view of the world is totally out of date, like it or not, 2026 is vastly different from 1996, the US no longer controls high tech whatsoever.

veber-alex 4mo ago

The value of these models is that you can run them on your own hardware. A company can buy a NVIDIA B300 and serve it's developers in house with unlimited tokens.