Coding · Head-to-head
GPT-5.5 vs GLM-5.2
GPT-5.5 vs GLM-5.2: pricing, features, and which to pick in 2026.
The verdict
Pick GPT-5.5 if…
- →overall capability matters more than price (AI Score 9.4 vs 8.7)
- →your primary use case is developers and teams needing a frontier reasoning model for agentic coding workflows and large-codebase context handling.
Pick GLM-5.2 if…
- →budget is the constraint
- →your primary use case is development teams building coding agents who want a frontier-class model they can self-host, fine-tune, and deploy under a fully permissive license.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | GPT-5.5 | GLM-5.2 |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Coding | Coding |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Headline pricing | API: $5/$30 per 1M tokens (in/out). ChatGPT Plus $20/mo, Pro $200/mo | Free 20M tokens on signup + open weights; paid API & coding plans (check site) |
| Free tier | No free API tier. Free ChatGPT users get GPT-4o, not GPT-5.5. | Free chat access plus 20M free tokens on API signup, and open weights available to download and self-host under MIT. |
| AI Score | 9.4/10 | 8.7/10 |
| Best for | Developers and teams needing a frontier reasoning model for agentic coding workflows and large-codebase context handling. | Development teams building coding agents who want a frontier-class model they can self-host, fine-tune, and deploy under a fully permissive license. |
| Editor's pick | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Use cases | development agents | development agents |
| Date added | 2026-05-02 | 2026-06-27 |
Pros and cons
GPT-5.5
Coding · paid
Pros
- ✓Top-of-class coding and reasoning benchmarks — measurably ahead of GPT-5 and competitive alternatives
- ✓True agentic capability with tool use, self-correction, and multi-step task completion
- ✓272K context handles entire codebases without chunking workarounds
- ✓Codex integration turns it into an autonomous software engineer inside ChatGPT
Cons
- ×API pricing is premium — $30/M output tokens adds up fast for heavy usage
- ×No free tier for the API; ChatGPT Free users are stuck on GPT-4o
- ×Slower inference than lighter models like GPT-4o-mini for simple tasks
- ×Closed-source with no self-hosting option — full vendor lock-in to OpenAI
GLM-5.2
Coding · freemium
Pros
- ✓MIT-licensed open weights — full commercial use, self-hosting, and fine-tuning with no revocable API terms
- ✓1M-token context handles whole codebases and long agent histories in one pass
- ✓Benchmark results competitive with top closed frontier models, especially on coding and agentic tasks
- ✓Genuinely free to start: chat UI, 20M signup tokens, or download the weights
- ✓Strong fit for coding agents thanks to its long-horizon, tool-use orientation
Cons
- ×At 744B parameters, self-hosting demands serious GPU hardware — out of reach for most individual developers
- ×Vendor-published benchmarks need independent verification; real-world coding performance may vary from the claims
- ×Hosted API and coding-plan pricing isn't transparently listed, so budgeting requires checking the site
- ×As a model from Zhipu AI, some enterprises face data-residency or procurement constraints around China-based providers
Related comparisons
Updated 2026-06-27. Spec data sourced from official product pages and tracked in our public directory at /tools.