Model comparison
GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwen3 Max
Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.7 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index. GLM-4.5-Air costs 5.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. GLM-4.5-Air scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3 Max in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3 Max leads 48.1 to 35.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 43% for GLM-4.5-Air and 72.5% for Qwen3 Max.
- GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper at $0.20 / $1.10 per million input/output tokens, against $1.20 / $6 for Qwen3 Max.
- Qwen3 Max accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
- GLM-4.5-Air has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Z.ai (Zhipu) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 38.9 | 43.7 |
| Released | 2025-07-20 | 2025-09-23 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 262K |
| Max output | 98K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.20 | $1.20 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.10 | $6 |
| Results tracked | 27 | 33 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3 Max leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 33.3 (#259), Qwen3 Max: 43.0 (#93)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1397 | 1456 |
| GSO | 2.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 370.45 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
GLM-4.5-Air: —, Qwen3 Max: —
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 71.56 |
Reasoning GLM-4.5-Air leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 24.1 (#166), Qwen3 Max: 22.6 (#190)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 43% | 72.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1379 | 1448 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 30.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 4% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.1% |
| LMCA | — | 28.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 142.38 |
| ForecastBench | 59.2 | — |
Math Qwen3 Max leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 36.2 (#170), Qwen3 Max: 38.7 (#131)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1396 | 1446 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 73.3% |
| Omni-MATH | 39.1% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.1% |
Knowledge Qwen3 Max leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 35.0 (#191), Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#78)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1370 | 1455 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 72.6% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 8.1% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 48.7% |
| MMLU-Pro | 76.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 9.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 59.4% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3 Max leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 49.1 (#135), Qwen3 Max: 53.7 (#62)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1366 | 1429 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1426 | 1478 |
| LMArena French | 1399 | 1449 |
| LMArena German | 1377 | 1463 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1348 | 1397 |
| LMArena Korean | 1308 | 1399 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1428 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1386 | 1462 |
Instruction Following Qwen3 Max leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 69.6 (#171), Qwen3 Max: 74.8 (#87)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1354 | 1419 |
| IFEval | 81.2% | — |
Long Context Too close to call
GLM-4.5-Air: 41.6 (#135), Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#134)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1366 | 1438 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| CL-bench | — | 14.5% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3 Max leads
GLM-4.5-Air: 55.9 (#139), Qwen3 Max: 62.4 (#76)
| Benchmark | GLM-4.5-Air | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1384 | 1439 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1343 | 1402 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1371 | 1446 |
| WildBench | 78.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GLM-4.5-Air better than Qwen3 Max?
Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.7 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index. GLM-4.5-Air costs 5.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, GLM-4.5-Air or Qwen3 Max?
GLM-4.5-Air is cheaper. It lists at $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.10 per million output tokens; Qwen3 Max lists at $1.20 and $6.
Is GLM-4.5-Air or Qwen3 Max better for coding?
Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.0 versus 33.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3 Max does, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do GLM-4.5-Air and Qwen3 Max share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. GLM-4.5-Air has 27 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.