// head_to_head
Qwen3.8 27B vs GLM 5.3 Flash
Published LiveBench scores across all seven categories, live list pricing, context windows, and the measured cost of a point of capability — for both models, side by side.
Qwen3.8 27B scores higher, GLM 5.3 Flash costs less — it depends on your workload.
Qwen3.8 27B is ahead by 3.7 points overall, and GLM 5.3 Flash lists 8.1× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 3.7 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you. GLM 5.3 Flash also leads on measured cost per point of capability, at $0.0161 per point.
qwen
Qwen3.8 27B
- Blended / 1M
- $0.956
- Context
- 1M
- Released
- Aug 14, 2026
- Overall score
- 75.3
z-ai
GLM 5.3 Flash
- Blended / 1M
- $0.119
- Context
- 1.3M
- Released
- Aug 26, 2026
- Overall score
- 71.6
Specs and pricing
| Metric | Qwen3.8 27B | GLM 5.3 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 75.3win | 71.6 |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.0556 | $0.0161win |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.956 | $0.119win |
| Input price / 1M | $0.425 | $0.075win |
| Output price / 1M | $2.55 | $0.250win |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.085 | $0.015win |
| Context window | 1M | 1.3Mwin |
| Max output tokens | 131K | 131K |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — Qwen3.8 27B on top, GLM 5.3 Flash below, both out of 100.
What each one costs to run
Per-token prices are hard to feel. These are monthly list costs for both models across five workload shapes, using each provider's published cached-input rate where there is one.
| Workload | Qwen3.8 27B | GLM 5.3 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $281.52/mo | $33.68/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $357.00/mo | $51.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $353.60/mo | $46.40/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $599.25/mo | $90.75/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $1147.50/mo | $182.50/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are running this at volume
GLM 5.3 Flash
Lowest measured cost per point of capability at $0.0161 per point — the gap compounds with every request.
Quality matters more than the bill
Qwen3.8 27B
Highest overall LiveBench score of the two at 75.3.
The workload is coding or agentic work
Qwen3.8 27B
Leads on agentic coding — 61.4 against 56.8.
You need to fit large documents in one call
GLM 5.3 Flash
Wider context window — 1.3M against 1M.
Qwen3.8 27B vs GLM 5.3 Flash FAQ
Which is better, Qwen3.8 27B or GLM 5.3 Flash?
Qwen3.8 27B scores higher, GLM 5.3 Flash costs less — it depends on your workload. Qwen3.8 27B is ahead by 3.7 points overall, and GLM 5.3 Flash lists 8.1× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 3.7 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you. GLM 5.3 Flash also leads on measured cost per point of capability, at $0.0161 per point.
Is Qwen3.8 27B cheaper than GLM 5.3 Flash?
GLM 5.3 Flash is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, Qwen3.8 27B lists at $0.956 per million tokens and GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.119 — GLM 5.3 Flash is 8.1× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — Qwen3.8 27B charges $0.425 in and $2.55 out, GLM 5.3 Flash charges $0.075 and $0.250 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Qwen3.8 27B vs GLM 5.3 Flash: which scores higher on benchmarks?
Qwen3.8 27B scores 75.3 and GLM 5.3 Flash scores 71.6 overall on LiveBench, the mean of its seven categories. That is a 3.7-point lead for Qwen3.8 27B. Category scores differ from the overall figure — a model can lead on reasoning and trail on coding, which the per-category table above breaks out.
Which gives better value for money, Qwen3.8 27B or GLM 5.3 Flash?
GLM 5.3 Flash. Cost per point divides the measured dollars LiveBench spent running the benchmark by the score it earned, so it captures something token pricing misses: a reasoning model can emit many times more tokens than its per-token rate suggests. Qwen3.8 27B works out at $0.0556 per point and GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.0161.
Does Qwen3.8 27B or GLM 5.3 Flash have a bigger context window?
GLM 5.3 Flash has the larger context window: 1M for Qwen3.8 27B against 1.3M for GLM 5.3 Flash. Note that a window you can fill is not a window you should fill — retrieval quality usually degrades well before the limit, and you pay for every token you put in it.
Do Qwen3.8 27B and GLM 5.3 Flash support prompt caching?
Both publish a cached-input rate: $0.085 per million for Qwen3.8 27B and $0.015 for GLM 5.3 Flash, against full input rates of $0.425 and $0.075. On a workload with a long stable prefix — a system prompt, a tool schema, a retrieved corpus — that changes the economics more than the headline price does.
Related comparisons
How these numbers are produced
- Price — provider list price from OpenRouter, refreshed every 15 minutes. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix.
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-06-25, using their own category map. Each model shows its strongest published run. A blank means “not evaluated”, never “bad”.
- Cost per point — the measured dollars LiveBench spent on the run, divided by the score it earned.
- “Win” — awarded only past a threshold: one full point on a benchmark score, 10% on a price, 25% on a context window. Anything tighter reports as a tie, because effort settings alone move a LiveBench score by more than that.
Published benchmarks rank models on someone else's tasks. Before committing, see LLM & agent evaluation for building an eval on your own.