GLM-5 vs. GLM-4.5

GLM-5 is Z.ai’s most advanced open-source model to date, purpose-built for complex systems engineering, long-horizon planning, and autonomous agent workflows. Building on the foundation of GLM-4.5, it dramatically scales both total parameters and pre-training data while increasing active parameter efficiency. The integration of DeepSeek Sparse Attention allows GLM-5 to maintain strong long-context reasoning capabilities while reducing deployment costs. To improve post-training performance, Z.ai developed slime, an asynchronous reinforcement learning infrastructure that significantly boosts training throughput and iteration speed. As a result, GLM-5 achieves top-tier performance among open-source models across reasoning, coding, and general agent benchmarks. It demonstrates exceptional strength in long-term operational simulations, including leading results on Vending Bench 2, where it manages a year-long simulated business with strong financial outcomes. In coding evaluations such as SWE-bench and Terminal-Bench 2.0, GLM-5 delivers competitive results that narrow the gap with proprietary frontier systems. The model is fully open-sourced under the MIT License and available through Hugging Face, ModelScope, and Z.ai’s developer platforms. Developers can deploy GLM-5 locally using inference frameworks like vLLM and SGLang, including support for non-NVIDIA hardware through optimization and quantization techniques. Through Z.ai, users can access both Chat Mode for fast interactions and Agent Mode for tool-augmented, multi-step task execution. GLM-5 also enables structured document generation, producing ready-to-use .docx, .pdf, and .xlsx files for business and academic workflows. With compatibility across coding agents and cross-application automation frameworks, GLM-5 moves foundation models from conversational assistants toward full-scale work engines.

Z.ai has launched its newest flagship model, GLM-4.5, which features an astounding total of 355 billion parameters (with 32 billion actively utilized) and is accompanied by the GLM-4.5-Air variant, which includes 106 billion parameters (12 billion active) tailored for advanced reasoning, coding, and agent-like functionalities within a unified framework. This innovative model is capable of toggling between a "thinking" mode, ideal for complex, multi-step reasoning and tool utilization, and a "non-thinking" mode that allows for quick responses, supporting a context length of up to 128K tokens and enabling native function calls. Available via the Z.ai chat platform and API, and with open weights on sites like HuggingFace and ModelScope, GLM-4.5 excels at handling diverse inputs for various tasks, including general problem solving, common-sense reasoning, coding from scratch or enhancing existing frameworks, and orchestrating extensive workflows such as web browsing and slide creation. The underlying architecture employs a Mixture-of-Experts design that incorporates loss-free balance routing, grouped-query attention mechanisms, and an MTP layer to support speculative decoding, ensuring it meets enterprise-level performance expectations while being versatile enough for a wide array of applications. Consequently, GLM-4.5 sets a remarkable standard for AI capabilities, pushing the boundaries of technology across multiple fields and industries. This advancement not only enhances user experience but also drives innovation in artificial intelligence solutions.