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Zhipu AI Launches GLM-4.6: Enhanced Coding and Reasoning Model

Zhipu AI has released its latest flagship model, GLM-4.6, which brings major upgrades in coding, reasoning, and long-context processing.

The new model is already being compared to top international systems like Claude Sonnet 4 and even its newer version, Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Zhipu AI’s ambition to challenge Western AI companies while giving developers around the world greater access to advanced tools.

What is Zhipu AI GLM-4.6

GLM-4.6 is a state-of-the-art large language model developed by Zhipu AI (now rebranded as Z.ai), representing a significant advancement in artificial intelligence capabilities, particularly for coding, reasoning, and long-context processing tasks.

It demonstrates stronger performance in search-based agent tasks and integrates more effectively within agent frameworks.

Key Upgrades in GLM-4.6

Bigger Context Window

  • GLM-4.6 has expanded its context window from 128K tokens to 200K tokens, meaning it can handle more data in a single conversation.
  • This is especially useful for working with long documents or big codebases. The output length has also increased to 128K tokens, allowing for detailed, multi-step answers.

Smarter Architecture

  • The model uses a Mixture of Experts (MoE) design with 355 billion total parameters and 32 billion active parameters.
  • This setup helps balance efficiency with performance, making it both powerful and cost-effective.

Strong Coding Performance

  • One of the standout features of GLM-4.6 is its real-world coding ability. It was tested on CC-Bench, where human evaluators gave coding tasks to the model in real programming environments.
  • GLM-4.6 won 48.6% of its matches against Claude Sonnet 4, showing that it can perform at nearly the same level as one of the most advanced Western AI models.
  • It also uses 15% fewer tokens than its predecessor GLM-4.5, making it cheaper to run. For example, it averages about 651,000 tokens per task, compared to 800,000–950,000 tokens for other top models.
  • The model works well across popular programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, and Java, and it performs strongly in building front-end designs, organizing clean code, and planning multi-step solutions.

Benchmark Results

In public benchmark tests, GLM-4.6 showed major progress:

AIME 25 math test: 93.9% (better than Claude Sonnet 4’s 74.3%)

GPQA (science reasoning): 81.0% (close to Claude Sonnet 4.5 at 83.4%)

LiveCodeBench v6 (coding): 82.8%, far higher than Claude Sonnet 4’s 48.9%

SWE-bench Verified (software tasks): 68.0%, just behind Claude Sonnet 4.5’s 77.2%

BrowseComp (agent tasks): 45.1%, beating all rivals tested

These results show that GLM-4.6 is competitive with the world’s best AI models and in some areas, even surpasses them.

Reasoning and Writing Improvements

GLM-4.6 not only codes well but also thinks and reasons more effectively. It can use tools while working, which helps in solving complex problems.

It also performs better in writing tasks, role-playing, and translation, especially for languages like French, Russian, Japanese, and Korean.

Accessibility

Unlike many top Western AI models, GLM-4.6 is fully open-source under the MIT license.

Developers can download the model weights from Hugging Face or ModelScope, and use them for local deployment, customization, or integration with coding tools.

This means startups, independent developers, and research groups can access cutting-edge AI without paying high licensing fees.

Pricing and Plans

Zhipu AI offers a GLM Coding Plan starting at $3 per month, giving affordable access to GLM-4.6.

For API usage, it costs about $0.60 per million input tokens and $2.20 per million output tokens, making it far cheaper than models like Claude Sonnet 4, which charges $3 for inputs and $15 for outputs.

Existing users of earlier GLM models can switch to 4.6 easily by updating their settings.

Future Development

Zhipu AI plans to keep improving GLM-4.6 with:

  • Better multimodal features in future versions.
  • Specialized skills for different industries.
  • Faster performance and efficiency.
  • Wider integration with coding tools and platforms.

For developers and businesses, GLM-4.6 offers a powerful and cost-effective alternative to leading Western AI systems. For the AI industry, it signals that the global AI race is now truly competitive.

News Gist

Zhipu AI has launched GLM-4.6, an open-source AI model with major improvements in coding, reasoning, and long-context processing.

Competing with Claude Sonnet 4.5, it delivers top benchmark results, lower costs, and broader accessibility under an MIT license.

FAQs

Q1. What is GLM-4.6?

GLM-4.6 is Zhipu AI’s latest flagship model designed for coding, reasoning, and long-context tasks.

Q2. Who developed GLM-4.6?

It was developed by Zhipu AI, a Chinese AI startup founded in 2019 by Tsinghua University professors.

Q3. How does GLM-4.6 compare to rivals?

It performs close to Claude Sonnet 4.5, beating it in some benchmarks, while being cheaper and open-source.

Q4. What makes GLM-4.6 unique?

It offers a 200K token context window, improved reasoning, better coding efficiency, and open-source access under the MIT license.

Q5. How much does it cost?

Pricing starts at just $3/month for the GLM Coding Plan, or $0.60 per million input tokens via API.

Q6. Where can developers access GLM-4.6?

The model weights are available on Hugging Face, ModelScope, and through Z.ai’s API platform.

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