Claude 3 Sonnet vs GLM-4-Air

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

Claude 3 Sonnet

Anthropic

First generation Sonnet. Balanced performance for general tasks.

Input$3.00/M
Output$15.00/M
Context200K tokens
Best ForGeneral-purpose coding and reasoning
Benchmark65/100

GLM-4-Air

Zhipu AI

Zhipu AI's mid-tier model. Good balance of cost and performance for Chinese-language applications.

Input$0.140/M
Output$0.140/M
Context128K tokens
Best ForChinese-language applications, general AI tasks

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

ScenarioClaude 3 SonnetGLM-4-AirSavings
Small Script (1K lines) $0.55 <$0.01 GLM-4-Air saves $0.55 (98%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $4.05 $0.08 GLM-4-Air saves $3.97 (98%)
Large Project (50K lines) $20.25 $0.39 GLM-4-Air saves $19.86 (98%)
Code Review (5K lines) $0.90 $0.03 GLM-4-Air saves $0.87 (97%)

Verdict

GLM-4-Air wins on both price and performance — $0.140/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Compare with Other Models