AionLabs Aion 3.5 Mini vs Z.ai GLM 5.3
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- GLM 5.3 is 2.2× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- GLM 5.3 accepts longer prompts: 1M vs 262K tokens.
- GLM 5.3 output costs $0.88 per 1M via Baidu, against the list price of $1.40.
- Aion 3.5 Mini is the newer model (released 2026-09-23).
| Aion 3.5 Mini | GLM 5.3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | AionLabs | Z.ai |
| Released | 2026-09-23 | 2026-08-18 |
| Input / 1M | $0.70 | $0.07 |
| Output / 1M | $1.40 | $1.40 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.18 | $0.069 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.875 | $0.402 |
| Context | 262K | 1M |
| Max output | 33K | 944K |
| Accepts | text | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 1 | 49 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $1.40 | $0.88 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | — | — |
Cost calculator
Aion 3.5 Mini
$63.00 per month$2.10 per day
GLM 5.3
$25.19 per month$0.84 per day
GLM 5.3 saves $37.81 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare Aion 3.5 Mini with