GLM-5.2 vs DeepSeek-V4 Pro
Head-to-head technical comparison of intelligence, capabilities, and API pricing.
Which should you use?
GLM-5.2 and DeepSeek-V4 Pro score within 0.3 points of each other on the composite index, which is too close to call a winner on capability alone.
Cost is the sharper difference: GLM-5.2 is 3.2x the input price of DeepSeek-V4 Pro ($1.4 against $0.435 per 1M), so at volume the choice is usually decided by budget rather than benchmarks.
Only GLM-5.2 ships open weights, which decides it outright if the workload has to run on your own hardware.
Pick GLM-5.2 when
- Ahead on Arena Elo by 16 points (1465 vs 1449), which is outside the board's published confidence intervals.
- Open weights, so it is the only one of the two you can run on your own hardware or keep data entirely in-house.
Pick DeepSeek-V4 Pro when
- Stronger on MMLU-Pro: 91.8% against 91.2%.
- Cheaper input tokens — $0.435 against $1.4 per 1M, so GLM-5.2 costs 3.2x as much to feed.
- Better value per point of measured capability: $0.005 per index point against $0.015.
Value per point of measured capability, at list input pricing: DeepSeek-V4 Pro $0.005 · GLM-5.2 $0.015 per index point. Run your own token mix through the token cost calculator — a comparison at list price ignores caching and batch discounts, which move real bills more than this gap does.
Where these numbers come from
Figures as of 2026-09-14. Arena Elo and pricing are read from the public board and each vendor's own pricing page; see the full leaderboard for all 34 models and which columns are measured rather than estimated, or the benchmark matrix for scores benchmark by benchmark.