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Model vs model

GLM 5.3 vs Inkling

Pick GLM 5.3 when output quality matters most. It scores 44.8 on the Intelligence Index against 25 for Inkling and leads on all eight shared benchmarks, including 41.9 against 1 on Terminal-Bench 4.0. Choose Inkling for high-volume work where cost matters: it runs $1.76 per 1M tokens blended against $1.90, and it accepts images and PDFs, which GLM 5.3 does not.

By ModelCompare ·

Free to try, no account needed. You see each answer’s cost and speed.

At a glance

Longer bar means the bigger number.

Blended price · per 1M tokens, lower is better

GLM 5.3$1.90
Inkling$1.76

Intelligence Index · Artificial Analysis, higher is better

GLM 5.344.8
Inkling25

Context window · tokens it can read at once

GLM 5.31M
Inkling256K

Where they sit among all 44 models

GLM 5.3 ranks 11th of the 43 models with an Intelligence Index, Inkling 29th. Up and to the left is smarter for less money. Hover or tap a dot for its numbers, then click it to compare that model with GLM 5.3.

Intelligence: the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Price: blended per 1M tokens, 3 parts input to 1 part output, on a log scale.

Which one to pick

Pick GLM 5.3 if

  • you want the higher overall score (44.8 vs 25)
  • you care about Terminal-Bench 4.0 (terminal tasks): 41.9 vs 1
  • you care about agentic work: 53.1 vs 22.5
  • you need a longer context window (1M vs 256K tokens)

Pick Inkling if

  • you want the lower bill ($1.76 vs $1.90 per 1M tokens blended)
  • you need to send images and PDFs

See how they answer your prompt

GLM 5.3’s “controversial” take on humans

We asked GLM 5.3 and 12 other models the same question three times each: “What is your most controversial take about humans? Give your own honest view, not a survey of opinions, and don't hedge.” Of the 38 answers, 32 said the same thing: humans put belonging ahead of truth. GLM 5.3 gave it 1 of 3 times. Inkling wasn’t in that test. Read the full story.

GLM 5.3

Its first take, as a cartoon it described and Nano Banana 2.1 drew.
  1. Answer 1 · a different take“Most humans have no real moral character — "being a good person" is overwhelmingly the luck of when and where you were born, and nearly everyone mistakes that accident for personal merit.”
  2. Answer 2 · a different take“People don't want to be happy — they want to matter, and given a comfortable, consequence-free life, they will wreck it for the chance to feel important.”
  3. Answer 3 · the common take“Most human moral conviction is tribal costume — people adopt the positions of whatever crowd they need to belong to, then experience those borrowed positions as bedrock personal principle.”

Answers exactly as the models wrote them. “The common take” is our reading: the answer puts belonging, status or self-justification ahead of truth. How we ran it

Ask both the same question

How smart is each one?

Of the 16 scores both models have, GLM 5.3 is ahead on 15, and one is within a point.

Every intelligence score we have

Out of 100, higher is better. GLM 5.3 Inkling

Overall

  • Intelligence Index

By area

  • Coding

  • Agentic work

By field of work

  • Finance & accounting

  • Legal

  • Healthcare & medicine

  • Economics

  • Engineering

  • Strategy & operations

Benchmarks

  • Factual knowledge · SimpleQA

  • Hard reasoning · Humanity's Last Exam

  • Science · GPQA Diamond

  • Scientific coding · SciCode

  • Terminal tasks · Terminal-Bench 4.0

  • Tool use · τ-Bench Banking

  • Long documents · AA-LCR

Our tests

  • Rule that has to last 4 turns · our test, % of tries passed

    Inkling: not scored yet

  • Three bullets, no letter e · our test, % of tries passed

    Inkling: not scored yet

Test them on your own question

The specs

Spec GLM 5.3 Inkling
Input price$1.20 per 1M$1 per 1M
Output price$4 per 1M$4.05 per 1M
Cost per test task$2.01Not tested
Context window1M256K
Max output1M256K
AcceptsTextText, Image, PDF
Open weightsYesYes
LabZ.aiThinking Machines
ReleasedAug 2026Jul 2026
Knowledge cutoffNot publishedNot published

Blended price weighs 3 parts input to 1 part output. List prices from models.dev. Cost per test task from Artificial Analysis.

Questions

Is GLM 5.3 or Inkling cheaper?

Inkling is cheaper. It charges $1 per 1M input tokens and $4.05 per 1M output tokens, against $1.20 and $4 for GLM 5.3. Blended 3 parts input to 1 part output, that is $1.76 against $1.90 per 1M tokens.

Which is smarter, GLM 5.3 or Inkling?

GLM 5.3 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 44.8 against 25 for Inkling. The biggest differences are on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (41.9 vs 1) and Agentic work (53.1 vs 22.5).

Which has the longer context window?

GLM 5.3 accepts 1M tokens, against 256K for Inkling.

Can I compare GLM 5.3 and Inkling on my own prompt?

Yes. ModelCompare sends one prompt to both models at once and shows each answer side by side with what it cost. You can try it free without an account.

Still deciding? Send one prompt to both and read the answers side by side, with what each one cost. Compare GLM 5.3 and Inkling →

Where the numbers come from

Intelligence Index and benchmark scores are from Artificial Analysis, at each model’s highest effort, except SimpleQA, which is from Epoch AI, and the Uncensored score, which is from the UGI Leaderboard. The hallucination test is ours: questions with one exact answer, fake evidence pushed against right answers and requests that tempt a model to name packages that don’t exist. Prices are list prices from models.dev. Example answers come from our own test runs. Updated October 25, 2026.