GLM-5.2 vs Grok 4.6

Head-to-head technical comparison of intelligence, capabilities, and API pricing.

GLM-5.2
Z.ai
AI Mastery Index91.5
LMSYS Arena1465
Technical (MMLU-Pro)91.2%
Cost per 1M Tokens$1.4
Grok 4.6
xAI
AI Mastery Index93.8
LMSYS Arena1470
Technical (MMLU-Pro)93.1%
Cost per 1M Tokens$2

Which should you use?

Grok 4.6 leads on the composite index by 2.3 points (91.5 vs 93.8).

Their Arena Elo differs by only 5 points, inside the confidence intervals the public board reports, so human preference does not separate them.

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

  • Cheaper input tokens — $1.4 against $2 per 1M, so Grok 4.6 costs 1.4x as much to feed.
  • Open weights, so it is the only one of the two you can run on your own hardware or keep data entirely in-house.
  • Better value per point of measured capability: $0.015 per index point against $0.021.

Pick Grok 4.6 when

  • Higher composite index — 93.8 against 91.5, a gap of 2.3 points.
  • Stronger on MMLU-Pro: 93.1% against 91.2%.

Value per point of measured capability, at list input pricing: GLM-5.2 $0.015 · Grok 4.6 $0.021 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.

Our reporting on Z.ai and xAI