AI model comparison

GLM 5.3 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B

Side by side comparison of GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B on pricing, benchmark scores, context window, and more.

GLM-5.3 is a large-scale reasoning model from Z.ai, built for complex software engineering and long-horizon agent tasks.

Input / 1M: $0.07
Output / 1M: $1.40
Context: 1.05M

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is an open-weight multimodal model from Alibaba Cloud with 35 billion total parameters and 3 billion active parameters per token.

Input / 1M: $0.10
Output / 1M: $0.90
Context: 262K

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At a glance

Quick verdict

How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.

Lower price

Qwen3.6 35B A3B

1.3x cheaper for a typical chat

Higher intelligence score

Not available

Not enough benchmark data

Larger context window

GLM 5.3

1.05M vs 262K tokens

Newer release

GLM 5.3

Released August 18, 2026

Benchmarks

Benchmark scores

Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.

Intelligence index

GLM 5.331.7

Qwen3.6 35B A3BNot available

Coding index

GLM 5.374.8

Qwen3.6 35B A3B41.9

Agentic index

GLM 5.353.1

Qwen3.6 35B A3B13.1

Pricing

GLM 5.3 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B API pricing

Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.

Metric	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Input tokensPer 1M tokens	$0.07	$0.10
Output tokensPer 1M tokens	$1.40	$0.90
Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens	$0.07	$0.03
Cache writePer 1M tokens	Not available	Not available

What it costs in practice

Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.

Chat message

2K in, 500 out

GLM 5.3$0.84

Qwen3.6 35B A3B$0.65

Coding task

30K in, 4K out

GLM 5.3$7.70$7.67 cached

Qwen3.6 35B A3B$6.60$4.35 cached

Long document summary

150K in, 2K out

GLM 5.3$13.29$13.14 cached

Qwen3.6 35B A3B$16.80$5.55 cached

Specs

Context window and capabilities

How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.

Metric	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Context window	1.05M tokens	262K tokens
Max output	944K tokens	236K tokens
Input types	Text	Image, Text, Video
Output types	Text	Text
Reasoning effort levels	Max, High, Low	Not available
Default reasoning effort	Max	Not available
Release date	August 18, 2026	April 27, 2026

Features

Supported features

API features available for each model.

Metric	GLM 5.3	Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Tool calling	Supported	Supported
Structured outputs	Supported	Supported
JSON mode	Supported	Supported
Reasoning	Supported	Supported
Temperature	Supported	Supported
Stop sequences	Supported	Supported
Deterministic seed	Supported	Supported
Verbosity control	Not supported	Not supported

Our take

Qwen3.6 35B A3B is 1.3x cheaper for a typical chat. GLM 5.3 has the larger context window (1.05M vs 262K tokens). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is GLM 5.3 or Qwen3.6 35B A3B cheaper?

Qwen3.6 35B A3B is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Qwen3.6 35B A3B costs $0.10 per 1M input tokens and $0.90 per 1M output tokens, while GLM 5.3 costs $0.07 per 1M input tokens and $1.40 per 1M output tokens.

Which has a bigger context window, GLM 5.3 or Qwen3.6 35B A3B?

GLM 5.3 supports up to 1.05M tokens of context, compared with 262K for Qwen3.6 35B A3B.

Can I use GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B at the same time?

Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B answer side by side and keep the better response.

Why choose? Ask both.

Send one prompt to GLM 5.3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.

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