AionLabs Aion 3.5 vs Z.ai GLM 5.2
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 5.2 is 2.1× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- GLM 5.2 accepts longer prompts: 1M vs 262K tokens.
- GLM 5.2 output costs $1.80 per 1M via DeepInfra, against the list price of $7.00.
- Aion 3.5 is the newer model (released 2026-09-23).
| Aion 3.5 | GLM 5.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | AionLabs | Z.ai |
| Released | 2026-09-23 | 2026-06-16 |
| Input / 1M | $3.00 | $0.0060 |
| Output / 1M | $6.00 | $7.00 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.75 | $0.0050 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $3.75 | $1.75 |
| Context | 262K | 1M |
| Max output | 33K | 944K |
| Accepts | text | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 1 | 34 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $6.00 | $1.80 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | — | — |
Cost calculator
Aion 3.5
$270 per month$9.00 per day
GLM 5.2
$105 per month$3.51 per day
GLM 5.2 saves $165 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare Aion 3.5 with