r/ZaiGLM

And no, there is no way to buy it. The website is chatglm.cn for subscription. But you need a Chinese phone number, Chinese bank account (Alipay, WeChat Pay).

469 Yuan = 69 $.

In the middle of sorting out a modal rendering issue, GLM 5 turbo got a bit sassy and came up with this woderful acronym, Flash of Unstyled Content (FOUC). I appreciate how the acronym sound when read allowed.

Not a praise post, but outcome from a genuine case study. Something changed with z.ai in their recent glm 5.1 model. I have been glm user since glm 4.5 and got their annual legacy plan during last Black Friday sale. First few weeks till a month after subscription was good and I was getting lot of things done in weeks. Then rush of people(me included as the whole point of buying it was to have a good enough work horse) into the low cost plans lead to huge surge in active users which dramatically lead to lower TPS and throughput of their models. Glm 4.7 came, touted to be as good as Claude models which was not so. Usage spike might have made z.ai to quantize the model quickly and it was felt clearly.

Lost hope in glm models and moved from Claude’s pro to 5x plan. To be honest the difference was day and night with sonnet 4.5 and 4.6, opus 4.5 and early days of opus 4.6. But recently opus 4.6 started to feel like it’s been heavily nerfed, does many illogical mistakes and misses that I used to find while reading through the edits. There use to be a time where I used to give requirements and read only summary at the end of what was done. That did not last long with opus and sonnet. I started spending more time than before. Tasks that was taking days changed to week in defining clear requirements, architecture, updates, establishing checkpoints, validation criteria at each checkpoint after an update or edit, carefully looking into the code to confirm incremental edits were done, corrections were surgical and dependents patched up correctly. What used to take days with Claude models started taking weeks and put weekly and hourly limits on top of that. At some point it looked like there is no escape. Earlier, Claude price was justified for the quality it offered. Lately I started to feel like I am getting sub par quality at inflated price.

All these time, my z.ai plan was lying dormant as I lost hope in glm models entirely. Lately z.ai increased the price of their subscription that made me to see if it there are any changes that justifies the value it’s been offered. Opened vscode and started exploring glm models. Gave a small task and it did it in a flash without mistakes. Surprised and then gave a bigger task and it aced it. Thought Oh god this is getting serious. Closed the day with a surprise and when I resumed next day there was another surprise from z.ai. I wasn’t able to use my subscription coz, “I violated their fair usage policy”. What fair usage? My foot. Account was dormant for almost 3 months and 2 sessions after that lead to temporary suspension! Got frustrated. But still intrigued by the performance improvement I waited patiently and got the account working after 4 days. Meanwhile I deleted all loose api keys and openclaw links.

For the past 3 days, I could feel that performance and speed are top notch and the difference between January and April is floor and ceiling. Workhorse is doing its part well. I want to race it against Claude models. Had parallel sessions running side by side in vscode on the same codebase. Still did not have full trust and for code edits and planning I mostly relied on sonnet and opus. There was an instance where I asked both claude(opus 4.7) and glm 5.1, to under the difference between v2 and v3(I accidentally typed it as v2). I typed it first in Claude, hit send, copied it, pasted it in glm 5.1 session and left for a break without noticing it. Came back and saw the output. Opus interpreted it was v1 and v2 that I was asking where as glm interpreted it was v2 and v3 I was asking and both did their own work. What was my intention? It’s v2 and v3 coz the context before this message revolved around v3 only. Information and context were same for both. Glm got it correctly. (Image attached).

Next, I had a working codebase do one in iOS/swift and an architectural handoff document to develop in android/kotlin. In a fresh session asked both to explore the document and compare it with the codebase. Claude’s sonnet said files were missing and architecture document is wrong about that part(there were many gaps and that document was again prepared by Opus/sonnet). But glm 5.1 identified correctly that it was wrapped in swift and architecture.md is wrong. Two instance and on both accounts glm 5.1 got it right.(image attached)

I am planning to take up android part of this development with glm models as I have non exhaustive token limits with z.ai. Right now the performance of Claude models may have dropped and glm might have caught up which may have lead to this. Whatever, at present legacy plan holders are getting great value. For new subscribers z.ai has to be reliable and keep the consistency for them to get normalised to the price. Hope this sustains.

TL;DR - got two comparisons. Glm understood my intention and produced right output where as Claude model made a mistake. Next, intentionally gave same tasks to both and glm 5.1 did it right where as Claude model got it wrong and need to be nudged to look codebase again carefully to correct its own mistake. So may be glm 5.1 is on par with Claude models(better than Claude models in my experience, though evidence is circumstantial)

We just added OpenCode Go as a provider in Manifest. If you have an OpenCode subscription, you can now route to their full model catalog through your existing setup.

Here's what's available:

• GLM-5
• GLM-5.1
• Kimi K2.5
• MiMo-V2-Omni
• MiMo-V2-Pro
• MiniMax M2.5
• MiniMax M2.7
• Qwen3.5 Plus
• Qwen3.6 Plus

Some of these are genuinely strong! Kimi K2.5 has been getting a lot of attention for reasoning tasks. GLM-5.1 is solid for general use, and Qwen3.5/3.6 Plus gives you access to Alibaba's latest without dealing with their API directly.

The interesting part for routing: these models are included in the OpenCode subscription. That changes the cost math pretty significantly.

It's live now. Just connect your OpenCode credentials in the provider settings and Manifest handles the rest. You can then set manually your routing if needed.

For those who haven't tried Manifest, it's a free and open-source LLM router that sends each request to the cheapest model that can handle it.

-> github.com/mnfst/manifest

Enjoy :)

TLDR: Petition to require AI companies to tell you what you get for your money.

Most of us have experienced it: you’re in the middle of a deep workflow when you suddenly hit a "usage cap" or get throttled to a slower model. Currently, providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google use vague terms like "Fair Use" or "Dynamic Limits" that change without notice.

The Proposal: The AI Usage Transparency Mandate

I’ve drafted a proposal (link below) calling for a standard disclosure across the industry. The goal is simple: if we pay for a service, we should know exactly what the "floor" and "ceiling" of that service are.

Key Requirements of the Proposal:

1. Standardized Disclosures: Every provider must list exact numerical token or request limits for Monthly, Weekly, and 5-Hour windows.
2. The "Unlimited" Standard: If a plan is marketed as unlimited, the provider must disclose the exact "floor", the point where deprioritization or throttling begins.
3. Real-Time Dashboards: A requirement for a simple UI/Terminal or web status that shows exactly how many tokens or requests remain in your current window.
4. No More Vague "Fair Use": Companies cannot hide behind "reasonable use" policies; they must define the numbers behind those policies at the time of subscription.

Why this matters: As AI becomes a professional tool, "predictability" is a requirement, not a luxury. We can't build workflows or businesses on limits that are invisible and ever-shifting.

Read the full proposal and sign here: https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/eu-law-ai-provider-must-confess-about-the-usage

To ensure this proposal gains legislative weight, I am initiating a phased outreach campaign to leading digital rights and consumer advocacy organizations across the EU. This includes engaging with the BEUC (European Consumer Organisation) and the EDRi network, alongside national civic engagement platforms like La Quadrature du Net (France), Digitalcourage (Germany) and others. Our goal is to formalize these transparency requirements as a standard for all AI providers operating within the European Single Market."

If you even been unexpectedly affected by limits, please share this to your friends and together we can make a change.

Just saw the hype train running over here about GLM bing absolutely the best bang for buck, and ill be honest I've never wanted my money back faster. But unfortunately there are no refunds whatsoever.

For people considering, don't lol, the usage is barely worth like 10 mins of exploratory work.

Claude's usage caps been bugging me lately (x20) so was looking to switchup/supplement workload between a chain of models. And GLM 5.1 just does not cut it.

Toodles.