GLM 5.2 vs Claude Opus 4.8
GLM 5.2 costs less on both: $0.18 in and $0.60 out per million tokens, against $1.50 in and $7.50 out for Claude Opus 4.8. Both on one key at UplinkSwitch, each next to its developer's list price.
Prices · per million tokens, USD
| Tokens | GLM 5.2glm-5.2 | Claude Opus 4.8claude-opus-4-8 |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.18Z.ai lists $0.60 · 70% under | $1.50Anthropic lists $5.00 · 70% under |
| Cached input | $0.051Z.ai lists $0.15 · 66% under | $0.15Anthropic lists $0.50 · 70% under |
| Output | $0.60Z.ai lists $2.00 · 70% under | $7.50Anthropic lists $25.00 · 70% under |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Max output | 131,072 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input | text | text, image |
| Released | 2026-06-16 | 2026-05-28 |
| Anthropic lifecycle | — | active, retires no sooner than 2027-05-28 |
| Formats | OpenAI SDK | Anthropic SDK, OpenAI SDK |
| Developer | Z.ai | Anthropic |
List price: each developer's published rate, read October 2026. A model with no cached rate bills cached tokens at its input rate. Live from GET https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/catalog. Lifecycle from Anthropic's model deprecations, read 2026-10-19.
What the same work costs · USD, here and at list
| Work | GLM 5.2 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $0.66list $2.20 | $6.75list $22.50 |
| 100 long documents | $1.02list $3.40 | $9.00list $30.00 |
| A month of both, daily | $50.40list $168.00 | $472.50list $1,575.00 |
A chat request is 2,000 input and 500 output tokens; a long document is 50,000 in and 2,000 out; the month is 1,000 chats and 100 documents a day for 30 days, uncached. Over that month GLM 5.2 costs $422.10 less here.
Newest in the line
- Claude Opus 5.5 is the newest in Claude Opus 4.8's line: $2.10 in and $6.00 out per million tokens here, against $4.00 and $20.00 at list. Claude Opus 5.5 vs Claude Opus 4.8.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The request below calls GLM 5.2; put claude-opus-4-8 in the model field to call Claude Opus 4.8 instead.
shell
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-live-..." \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"glm-5.2","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Model pages: GLM 5.2, Claude Opus 4.8. Pricing by family: GLM, Claude. More comparisons: GLM 5.2 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423, GLM 5.2 vs Claude Fable 5, GPT-5.5 vs GLM 5.2, Claude Opus 5.5 vs Claude Opus 4.8.
Questions
- Which costs less, GLM 5.2 or Claude Opus 4.8?
- GLM 5.2 costs less on both: $0.18 in and $0.60 out per million tokens, against $1.50 in and $7.50 out for Claude Opus 4.8.
- Can I switch between them by changing the model id?
- Yes. Both answer in the OpenAI SDK format at the same base URL with the same key. Change the model id from glm-5.2 to claude-opus-4-8 and nothing else.
- Is there a subscription?
- No. Prepaid credit from $10, with no subscription or monthly fee. Each top-up locks your prices for 30 days.
- Is GLM 5.2 better than Claude Opus 4.8?
- Better depends on the job; this page compares what the catalog can measure. GLM 5.2 costs less on both: $0.18 in and $0.60 out per million tokens, against $1.50 in and $7.50 out for Claude Opus 4.8. Both take 1,000,000 tokens of context. GLM 5.2 is the newer release. Both run on the same key, so the fair test is your own prompt sent to each model id.