GLM-5.2 Is The New Best Open Model
Zvi (Don't Worry About the Vase) ● Covered by 3 sources
Zhipu released GLM-5.2, an open model that scores around Opus 4.7 on various benchmarks and ranks as the strongest open-source model available. The model costs $1.40 per 1K input tokens and $4.40 per 1K output tokens, performing well on traditional benchmarks but showing weaker performance on less-targetable tasks, likely because it is distilled from Claude. Users report GLM-5.2 is practical for many tasks but occupies an awkward market position—too expensive and not strong enough to displace paid frontier models for difficult tasks, yet too costly compared to cheaper open alternatives for routine work.
Why it matters
GLM-5.2 has recently been released, with impressive performance metrics that position it as the strongest available open model. While it does great in specific areas, the model's higher costs and limitations, such as the lack of vision capabilities and tendencies towards overfitting on benchmarks, could make its practical utility worse in various tasks.