Model comparison

GLM-4.5-Air vs Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.5 to 38.7 on the Noometry Index. GLM-4.5-Air costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 19 shared benchmarks.

GLM-4.5-Air Z.ai (Zhipu)

38.7

Rank #169 Confirmed

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) xAI

48.5

Rank #48 Confirmed

Summary

They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. GLM-4.5-Air scores higher in 0 categories and Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads 52.2 to 23.3.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 43% for GLM-4.5-Air and 75% for Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning).
GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper at $0.20 / $1.10 per million input/output tokens, against $1.25 / $2.50 for Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning).
Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
GLM-4.5-Air has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GLM-4.5-Air and Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) specifications
	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
Provider	Z.ai (Zhipu)	xAI
Noometry Index	38.7	48.5
Released	2025-07-20	2026-02-17
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	131K	1M
Max output	98K	30K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.20	$1.25
Output $ / M tokens	$1.10	$2.50
Results tracked	27	46

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Category by category

Coding Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 34.5 (#225), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 41.8 (#104)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Coding	1397	1458
LMArena WebDev	—	1374
GSO	2.9%	—
WeirdML	—	52.3%
ALE-Bench	—	1,150

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GLM-4.5-Air: —, Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 34.3 (#43)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
Terminal-Bench	—	57.3%
τ²-bench Banking	—	18%
LMArena Search	—	1189
Vending-Bench 2	—	4,663

Reasoning Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 23.3 (#166), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 52.2 (#30)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
Kagi LLM Benchmark	43%	75%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1379	1451
ForecastBench	59.2	61.4
ARC-AGI-2	—	65.1%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	85.4%
ARC-AGI-1	—	89.5%
Chess Puzzles	—	24%
Thematic Generalization	—	63.8%
DTBench	—	90.1%
LMCA	—	38.7%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	152.01

Math Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 33.8 (#166), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 48.0 (#54)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Math	1396	1455
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	—	44.9%
FrontierMath Tier 4	—	17.1%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	92.2%
ProofBench	—	14%
Omni-MATH	39.1%	—

Knowledge Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 34.6 (#184), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 52.8 (#54)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Expert	1370	1440
GPQA Diamond	—	89.3%
Humanity's Last Exam	8.1%	—
SimpleQA Verified	—	30.2%
MMLU-Pro	76.2%	—
Vectara Hallucination Rate	9.3%	—
GPQA (HELM)	59.4%	—

Multimodal Not comparable

GLM-4.5-Air: —, Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 33.2 (#88)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Vision	—	1263
Blueprint-Bench 2	—	0%
LMArena Document	—	1416

Multilingual Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 49.4 (#130), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 54.7 (#38)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Non-English	1366	1440
LMArena Chinese	1427	1481
LMArena French	1399	1477
LMArena German	1376	1463
LMArena Japanese	1348	1450
LMArena Korean	1306	1417
LMArena Russian	1373	1457
LMArena Spanish	1385	1442

Instruction Following Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 69.8 (#165), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 75.0 (#79)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Instruction Following	1353	1420
IFEval	81.2%	—

Long Context Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 41.6 (#130), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 45.4 (#33)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Longer Query	1367	1436
CL-bench	—	22.2%
CL-bench Life	—	11.9%

Writing & Preference Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

GLM-4.5-Air: 56.1 (#134), Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 65.9 (#42)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	GLM-4.5-Air	Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)
LMArena Text	1384	1451
LMArena Creative Writing	1343	1439
LMArena Multi-Turn	1371	1456
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1574
WildBench	78.9%	—

Frequently asked questions

Is GLM-4.5-Air better than Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)?

Which is cheaper, GLM-4.5-Air or Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)?

GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper. It lists at $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.10 per million output tokens; Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) lists at $1.25 and $2.50.

Is GLM-4.5-Air or Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) better for coding?

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.8 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do GLM-4.5-Air and Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. GLM-4.5-Air has 27 scored results on Noometry and Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) has 46.