GLM 5.2 vs Grok 4.5
GLM 5.2 costs less on both: $0.18 in and $0.60 out per million tokens, against $0.60 in and $1.80 out for Grok 4.5. 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 | Grok 4.5grok-4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.18Z.ai lists $0.60 · 70% under | $0.60xAI lists $2.00 · 70% under |
| Cached input | $0.051Z.ai lists $0.15 · 66% under | $0.09xAI lists $0.30 · 70% under |
| Output | $0.60Z.ai lists $2.00 · 70% under | $1.80xAI lists $6.00 · 70% under |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 500,000 tokens |
| Max output | 131,072 tokens | — |
| Input | text | text, image |
| Released | 2026-06-16 | 2026-07-08 |
| Formats | OpenAI SDK | OpenAI SDK |
| Developer | Z.ai | xAI |
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.
What the same work costs · USD, here and at list
| Work | GLM 5.2 | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $0.66list $2.20 | $2.10list $7.00 |
| 100 long documents | $1.02list $3.40 | $3.36list $11.20 |
| A month of both, daily | $50.40list $168.00 | $163.80list $546.00 |
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 $113.40 less here.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The request below calls GLM 5.2; put grok-4.5 in the model field to call Grok 4.5 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, Grok 4.5. Pricing by family: GLM, Grok. More comparisons: GLM 5.2 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423, GLM 5.2 vs Claude Fable 5, GLM 5.2 vs Claude Opus 4.8, GPT-5.5 vs GLM 5.2.
Questions
- Which costs less, GLM 5.2 or Grok 4.5?
- GLM 5.2 costs less on both: $0.18 in and $0.60 out per million tokens, against $0.60 in and $1.80 out for Grok 4.5.
- 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 grok-4.5 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 Grok 4.5?
- 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 $0.60 in and $1.80 out for Grok 4.5. GLM 5.2 takes 1,000,000 tokens of context against 500,000 for Grok 4.5. Grok 4.5 is the newer release. Both run on the same key, so the fair test is your own prompt sent to each model id.