Model comparison

GLM-5 vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

GLM-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.9 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 7.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GLM-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 24 shared benchmarks.

GLM-5 Z.ai (Zhipu)

45.9

Rank #59 Confirmed

Qwen3-30B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

38.5

Rank #174 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. GLM-5 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in long context, where GLM-5 leads 44.6 to 31.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 75% for GLM-5 and 54.9% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $3.20 for GLM-5.
  • GLM-5 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 41K.

Side by side

GLM-5 and Qwen3-30B-A3B specifications
GLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
ProviderZ.ai (Zhipu)Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index45.938.5
Released2026-02-112025-04-28
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window205K41K
Max output131K16K
Input $ / M tokens$1$0.12
Output $ / M tokens$3.20$0.50
Results tracked4532

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Category by category

Coding GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 49.0 (#47), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.0 (#188)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
WeirdML48.2%29.8%
LMArena Coding14611416
SWE-bench Verified72.1%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)72.8%—
LMArena WebDev1434—
SWE-bench Multilingual69.7%—
SciCode—33.3%
ALE-Bench765.62—

Agentic & Tool Use GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 30.9 (#65), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.5 (#75)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
Terminal-Bench52.4%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—41.4%
τ²-bench Airline82.5%—
τ²-bench Banking9.8%—
τ²-bench Retail73.7%—
τ²-bench Telecom86.8%—
Vending-Bench 24,432—

Reasoning GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 27.6 (#100), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 21.6 (#193)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
Kagi LLM Benchmark75%54.9%
Chess Puzzles10%8%
LMArena Hard Prompts14511398
Epoch Capabilities Index145.84139.63
ARC-AGI-24.9%—
SimpleBench53.2%—
NYT Connections (extended)74.8%—
ARC-AGI-144.7%—
CritPt—0.3%
DTBench—69.3%
LMCA—22.4%
ForecastBench61—

Math GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 44.8 (#66), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 36.0 (#133)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions65.7%47.8%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202580%70.3%
LMArena Math14401394
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)16.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)2.1%—

Knowledge GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 52.2 (#59), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.7 (#96)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
GPQA Diamond87.8%70.1%
LMArena Expert14541395
Confabulations—12.3%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.1%—

Multilingual GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 53.9 (#57), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.8 (#126)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Non-English14301372
LMArena Chinese15111434
LMArena French14551419
LMArena German14451379
LMArena Japanese14161338
LMArena Korean14211333
LMArena Russian14361369
LMArena Spanish14521403

Instruction Following GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 75.4 (#64), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.2 (#137)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following14271364

Long Context GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 44.6 (#58), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#278)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query14461379
Fiction.LiveBench—40.6%
CL-bench18.7%—

Writing & Preference GLM-5 leads

GLM-5: 66.2 (#38), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.9 (#138)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGLM-5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Text14461384
LMArena Creative Writing14381318
LMArena Multi-Turn14561378
Short-Story Creative Writing—75.3%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1601—

Frequently asked questions

Is GLM-5 better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

GLM-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.9 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 7.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GLM-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GLM-5 or Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; GLM-5 lists at $1 and $3.20.

Is GLM-5 or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

GLM-5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 49.0 versus 37.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

GLM-5 does, with 205K tokens against 41K.

How many benchmarks do GLM-5 and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

24 benchmarks have published results for both models. GLM-5 has 45 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.

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