Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GLM-4.5-Air

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index. GLM-4.5-Air costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

GLM-4.5-Air Z.ai (Zhipu)

38.9

Rank #177 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and GLM-4.5-Air in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 24.1.
  • GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper at $0.20 / $1.10 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • GLM-4.5-Air has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GLM-4.5-Air specifications
Claude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
ProviderAnthropicZ.ai (Zhipu)
Noometry Index50.338.9
Released2026-02-172025-07-20
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K98K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.20
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.10
Results tracked5727

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), GLM-4.5-Air: 33.3 (#259)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Coding15041397
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1522—
SciCode46.8%—
GSO—2.9%
WeirdML66.1%—
ALE-Bench1,327—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), GLM-4.5-Air: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
Terminal-Bench53.4%—
APEX-Agents43%—
OSWorld 2.09.3%—
DeepResearch Bench54.9%—
OSWorld72.1%—
ExploitBench23.6%—
GBAEval48.8%—
GDP.pdf18%—
LMArena Search1221—
Vending-Bench 27,204—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), GLM-4.5-Air: 24.1 (#166)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Hard Prompts14841379
ForecastBench6259.2
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—43%
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Chess Puzzles13%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
DTBench89.9%—
LMCA46.5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index152.24—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), GLM-4.5-Air: 36.2 (#170)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Math14621396
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%—
ProofBench45%—
Omni-MATH—39.1%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)8.3%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), GLM-4.5-Air: 35.0 (#191)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%9.3%
LMArena Expert15001370
GPQA Diamond87.4%—
Humanity's Last Exam—8.1%
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
MMLU-Pro—76.2%
GPQA (HELM)—59.4%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), GLM-4.5-Air: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), GLM-4.5-Air: 49.1 (#135)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Non-English14401366
LMArena Chinese14911426
LMArena French14651399
LMArena German14281377
LMArena Japanese14201348
LMArena Korean14111308
LMArena Russian14401373
LMArena Spanish14641386

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), GLM-4.5-Air: 69.6 (#171)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Instruction Following14751354
IFEval—81.2%

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), GLM-4.5-Air: 41.6 (#135)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Longer Query14791366

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), GLM-4.5-Air: 55.9 (#139)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6GLM-4.5-Air
LMArena Text14581384
LMArena Creative Writing14351343
LMArena Multi-Turn14641371
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
WildBench—78.9%
EQ-Bench 41207—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than GLM-4.5-Air?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index. GLM-4.5-Air costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GLM-4.5-Air?

GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper. It lists at $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.10 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GLM-4.5-Air better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 33.3 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GLM-4.5-Air share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and GLM-4.5-Air has 27.

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