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DeepSeek vs Z.ai
DeepSeek and Z.ai both ship open weights from China. DeepSeek wins on per-token price and off-peak discounts; Z.ai wins on an $18 coding plan and drop-in Claude Code support.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
DeepSeek vs Z.ai: key differences
On paper these labs look alike: Chinese, open weights, cheap hosted APIs. The pricing models differ. DeepSeek bills per token with a time-of-day split, so V4.1 Flash is $0.30 in and $1.20 out at peak and half that off-peak. Z.ai's GLM-5.3 is $1.40 in and $4.40 out with cached input at $0.26, GLM-5.3-Flash is $0.15 in and $0.50 out, and several older Flash models are free. DeepSeek's cache hits cost a few cents per million or less, and its models carry 1M context with 384K max output.
Z.ai's pull is the GLM Coding Plan. At $18 a month on Lite, developers get 10,000 credits a week, and an Anthropic compatible endpoint runs Claude Code on GLM with a few environment variables. The catch is that credits go about 3x faster on GLM-5.3 than on GLM-5.3-Flash and cost double during weekday peak hours. DeepSeek's catch is that its hosted data is stored in China and it reprices often. Individual coders on a budget lean Z.ai. Metered agents and batch jobs lean DeepSeek.
What DeepSeek and Z.ai do
DeepSeek
DeepSeek is the Chinese lab whose open-weight models reset price expectations for the whole market. Its main model is V4.1 Flash, with 1M context and 384K max output, which shipped September 10, 2026 with built-in image understanding at $0.30 in and $1.20 out at peak. An updated checkpoint, V4.1-Flash-1017, replaced it on October 17 at the same price. DeepSeek had planned to route deepseek-v4-pro requests to V4.1 Flash from September 14 but reversed course, and still serves V4 Pro at $1.32 in and $3.96 out at peak until a V4.1 Pro launches. Cache hits cost a few cents per million or less, and the weights ship on Hugging Face under an MIT license.
Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Full DeepSeek profileZ.ai
Z.AI is the international brand of Chinese lab Zhipu AI, maker of the GLM models. Its current flagship, GLM-5.3, shipped August 17, 2026 at $1.40 in and $4.40 out per million tokens, with cached input at $0.26. Its weights came out August 28 under a custom GLM-5.3 License that requires a security review for hosts with more than $10B in yearly revenue. GLM-5.3-Flash, a 320B multimodal model with 18B active, costs $0.15 in and $0.50 out, and several older Flash models are priced at zero, a real free tier instead of trial credits. GLM-5, released in February 2026, is a 744B mixture-of-experts model under an MIT license, and at launch it ranked first among open-weight models on the Artificial Analysis index with a record-low hallucination score.
Example models: GLM-5.3, GLM-5.3-Flash
Full Z.ai profileShould you choose DeepSeek or Z.ai?
DeepSeek vs Z.ai at a glance
| Attribute | DeepSeek | Z.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights (MIT) | Open weights (GLM-5.3 License; MIT on Flash and older) |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | GLM-5.3, GLM-5.3-Flash |
| Speed | ~209 tok/s on V4.1 Flash | ~80 tok/s on GLM-5.3 |
| Price | Off-peak hours at half price | $1.40 in, $4.40 out (GLM-5.3); free Flash tier |
| Customization | Open weights to fine-tune | Open weights; GLM-5.3 License adds review for large hosts |
| Deployment | First-party API, Hugging Face weights | API, GLM Coding Plan |
| Long context | 1M, 384K max output | 1M (GLM-5.3) |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between DeepSeek and Z.ai?
DeepSeek and Z.ai both ship open weights from China. DeepSeek wins on per-token price and off-peak discounts; Z.ai wins on an $18 coding plan and drop-in Claude Code support.
When should I choose DeepSeek over Z.ai?
Metered agents and batch work priced per token; Long outputs up to 384K tokens; Very cheap cache hits on long prefixes.
When should I choose Z.ai over DeepSeek?
Flat-rate agentic coding inside Claude Code; Free Flash models for prototyping; Developers who want predictable monthly spend.
Is DeepSeek or Z.ai cheaper?
DeepSeek: Off-peak hours at half price. Z.ai: $1.40 in, $4.40 out (GLM-5.3); free Flash tier. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
Which has more context, DeepSeek or Z.ai?
DeepSeek: 1M, 384K max output. Z.ai: 1M (GLM-5.3).
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If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious. Our inference stack treats a long-horizon trace as the primary workload, so speed, cost, and accuracy hold up deep into the trace.