GLM 5.3 vs Kimi K3
GLM 5.3 costs less on both: $0.3276 in and $1.0296 out per million tokens, against $0.90 in and $4.50 out for Kimi K3. Both on one key at UplinkSwitch, each next to its developer's list price.
Prices · per million tokens, USD
| Tokens | GLM 5.3glm-5.3 | Kimi K3kimi-k3 |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.3276Z.ai lists $1.092 · 70% under | $0.90Moonshot AI lists $3.00 · 70% under |
| Cached input | $0.0608Z.ai lists $0.2028 · 70% under | $0.09Moonshot AI lists $0.30 · 70% under |
| Output | $1.0296Z.ai lists $3.432 · 70% under | $4.50Moonshot AI lists $15.00 · 70% under |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Max output | 131,072 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Input | text | text, image, video |
| Released | 2026-08-18 | 2026-07-16 |
| Formats | OpenAI SDK | OpenAI SDK |
| Developer | Z.ai | Moonshot AI |
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 5.3 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $1.17list $3.90 | $4.05list $13.50 |
| 100 long documents | $1.84list $6.15 | $5.40list $18.00 |
| A month of both, daily | $90.42list $301.39 | $283.50list $945.00 |
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 5.3 costs $193.08 less here.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The request below calls GLM 5.3; put kimi-k3 in the model field to call Kimi K3 instead.
shell
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-live-..." \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"glm-5.3","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Model pages: GLM 5.3, Kimi K3. Pricing by family: GLM, Kimi. More comparisons: GLM 5.3 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813, MiniMax M2.7 vs GLM 5.3, GLM 5.3 vs GLM 5.3 Flash, Kimi K3 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5.
Questions
- Which costs less, GLM 5.3 or Kimi K3?
- GLM 5.3 costs less on both: $0.3276 in and $1.0296 out per million tokens, against $0.90 in and $4.50 out for Kimi K3.
- 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-5.3 to kimi-k3 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.