Coding · Head-to-head

GPT-5.5 vs GLM-5.2

GPT-5.5 (paid, AI Score 8.7/10) vs GLM-5.2 (freemium, AI Score 8.5/10). Side-by-side pricing, features, pros and cons, and which to pick.

The verdict

Pick GPT-5.5 if…

→your primary use case is teams already running gpt-5.5 in production who want a generally-available, independently benchmarked frontier model rather than switching a working stack to a newer gated preview.

Try GPT-5.5 →

Pick GLM-5.2 if…

→budget is the constraint
→your primary use case is engineering teams building coding agents who need frontier-class capability under a license they fully control — self-hosted, fine-tuned, or air-gapped — rather than rented from a closed api.

Try GLM-5.2 →

Spec	GPT-5.5	GLM-5.2
Category	Coding	Coding
Pricing model	paid	freemium
Headline pricing	API: $5/$30 per 1M tokens (in/out) as last published. ChatGPT Plus $20/mo, Pro $200/mo	Free chat + MIT open weights; paid API and GLM Coding Plan — check site for current rates
Free tier	No free API tier. ChatGPT's free plan does not include GPT-5.5; free traffic routes to smaller models.	Yes — free chat access plus MIT-licensed weights you can download and run at no license cost. Hosted API and Coding Plan rates are not stated here because they were not verified against z.ai on the date of this update; check the site directly before budgeting.
AI Score	8.7/10	8.5/10
Best for	Teams already running GPT-5.5 in production who want a generally-available, independently benchmarked frontier model rather than switching a working stack to a newer gated preview.	Engineering teams building coding agents who need frontier-class capability under a license they fully control — self-hosted, fine-tuned, or air-gapped — rather than rented from a closed API.
Editor's pick	—	—
Use cases	development agents	development agents
Date added	2026-05-02	2026-06-27

Coding · paid

✓Generally available and independently benchmarked, with months of production track record behind it
✓Genuine agentic capability: tool use, self-correction and multi-step task completion, not just single-turn answers
✓272K context still handles most whole-codebase and long-document work without chunking
✓Mini and nano tiers let you route cheap calls without leaving OpenAI

×Superseded by the GPT-5.6 family in June 2026, including as the model behind Codex — this is prior-generation now
×Still carries flagship pricing at $5/$30 while GPT-5.6 Terra ($2.50/$15) and Kimi K3 ($3/$15) target similar work for less
×272K context now trails the 1M-token windows on Gemini 3.5 Pro and Kimi K3
×Closed weights with no self-hosting path, so migration cost is entirely OpenAI's to price

Coding · freemium

✓MIT license at 744B parameters — commercial use, fine-tuning and redistribution with no revocable API terms or MAU clause
✓1M-token context handles whole repositories and long agent histories in one pass
✓Tuned for long-horizon, multi-turn tool use rather than one-shot completion, which is the workload coding agents actually run
✓Self-hosting is a genuine option for teams with data-residency or air-gap requirements, not a theoretical one
✓Materially cheaper than closed frontier tiers like GPT-5.6 Sol at $5/$30 per million tokens

×744B parameters means serious multi-GPU hardware to self-host, so most teams end up on the hosted API anyway — back on someone else's terms
×The launch claim of beating GPT-5.5 on long-horizon coding was vendor- and press-reported and still has no independent replication; GPT-5.6 Sol shipped in July and moved the comparison point
×The cheap-frontier field caught up fast — Qwen 3.8 Max at $2/$6 and Kimi K3 at $3/$15 offer comparable context, so GLM-5.2's cost edge is no longer distinctive
×Hosted API and Coding Plan prices are not published in an easily comparable form, and some enterprises face data-residency or procurement blocks on a China-based provider

Updated 2026-08-10. Spec data sourced from official product pages and tracked in our public directory at /tools.