Google Nano Banana 2.1 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 1.7× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- GLM 5.2 accepts longer prompts: 1M vs 66K tokens.
- GLM 5.2 output costs $0.594 per 1M via Baidu, against the list price of $7.00.
- Nano Banana 2.1 is the newer model (released 2026-10-06).
| Nano Banana 2.1 | GLM 5.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Z.ai | |
| Released | 2026-10-06 | 2026-06-16 |
| Input / 1M | $1.50 | $0.014 |
| Output / 1M | $7.50 | $7.00 |
| Cached input / 1M | — | $0.013 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $3.00 | $1.76 |
| Context | 66K | 1M |
| Max output | 59K | 944K |
| Accepts | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 1 | 34 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $7.50 | $0.594 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 99.86% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | — |
Cost calculator
Nano Banana 2.1
$203 per month$6.75 per day
GLM 5.2
$106 per month$3.53 per day
GLM 5.2 saves $96.66 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare Nano Banana 2.1 with