Model comparison
GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.3 to 38.7 on the Noometry Index. GLM-4.5-Air costs 2.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. GLM-4.5-Air scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Plus in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 Plus leads 56.1 to 34.6.
- GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper at $0.20 / $1.10 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Qwen3.6 Plus 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 | Qwen3.6 Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Z.ai (Zhipu) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 38.7 | 47.3 |
| Released | 2025-07-20 | 2026-03-31 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 1M |
| Max output | 98K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.20 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.10 | $3 |
| Results tracked | 27 | 37 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 34.5 (#225), Qwen3.6 Plus: 40.6 (#125)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1397 | 1467 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 57.9% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1461 |
| SciCode | — | 40.7% |
| GSO | 2.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 670.15 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
GLM-4.5-Air: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: —
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,115 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 23.3 (#166), Qwen3.6 Plus: 28.5 (#89)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1379 | 1449 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 43% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.3% |
| CritPt | — | 2.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 59.5% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
| DTBench | — | 81.9% |
| LMCA | — | 33.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.67 |
| ForecastBench | 59.2 | — |
Math Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 33.8 (#166), Qwen3.6 Plus: 50.6 (#44)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1396 | 1450 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 38.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 93.3% |
| Omni-MATH | 39.1% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 26.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 34.6 (#184), Qwen3.6 Plus: 56.1 (#40)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1370 | 1456 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 88.4% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 8.1% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 44.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | 76.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 9.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 59.4% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 49.4 (#130), Qwen3.6 Plus: 53.5 (#66)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1366 | 1424 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1427 | 1478 |
| LMArena French | 1399 | 1454 |
| LMArena German | 1376 | 1451 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1348 | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | 1306 | 1381 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1434 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1385 | 1432 |
Instruction Following Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 69.8 (#165), Qwen3.6 Plus: 75.2 (#70)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1353 | 1425 |
| IFEval | 81.2% | — |
Long Context Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 41.6 (#130), Qwen3.6 Plus: 45.1 (#48)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1367 | 1440 |
| CL-bench | — | 20.3% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 56.1 (#134), Qwen3.6 Plus: 62.4 (#78)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1384 | 1437 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1343 | 1405 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1371 | 1438 |
| WildBench | 78.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GLM-4.5-Air better than Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.3 to 38.7 on the Noometry Index. GLM-4.5-Air costs 2.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, GLM-4.5-Air or Qwen3.6 Plus?
GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper. It lists at $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.10 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus lists at $0.50 and $3.
Is GLM-4.5-Air or Qwen3.6 Plus better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.6 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do GLM-4.5-Air and Qwen3.6 Plus share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. GLM-4.5-Air has 27 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Plus has 37.