🚀 GLM-4.7 vs. The $200 Giants: Is China's $3 AI Coding Tool the New Market King?
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THE FRONTIER AGENTIC REASONING MODEL (2025)
💡 Key Takeaways (TL;DR)
- GLM-4.7 is the new SOTA (State of the Art) AI coding model for 2025.
- Developed by Zhipu AI, it offers enterprise-level performance matching or exceeding flagship models like Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5.1 High.
- Context Window: Massive 200K tokens for full codebase analysis.
- Best For: Cost-conscious developers, agentic workflows, and high-complexity debugging.
The global landscape for AI-powered development is shifting. While Western tools like Cursor Pro and GitHub Copilot have dominated by charging premium subscription rates (often reaching $200 per year), a new contender from Beijing, China, has arrived to dismantle that pricing model.
Zhipu AI has released GLM-4.7, a large language model specifically engineered for coding, offering performance that rivals top-tier US models. For pricing information, visit Z.ai subscription page or use via OpenRouter.
⚔️ The Frontier Battle: Verified Benchmarks
GLM-4.7 demonstrates competitive performance against the newest generation of flagship models, including Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5.1 High, based on the official Z.ai Technical Report (Dec 2025).
📊 2025 AI Coding Model Performance Comparison
Note: Best scores per category are highlighted in \color{green}{\text{green}}. Data sourced from Z.ai Official Blog.
mindmap
root((GLM-4.7<br/>🏆 SOTA 2025))
Math🧮
AIME 25<br/><b>95.7%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
GPT: 94.0%<br/>━━━━━━━━░
Gemini: 95.0%<br/>━━━━━━━━━
DeepSeek: 93.1%<br/>━━━━━━━━░
Claude: 87.0%<br/>━━━━━━░░░
Coding💻
LiveCode<br/><b>84.9%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
GPT: 87.0%<br/>━━━━━━━━━
Gemini: <b>90.7%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
DeepSeek: 83.3%<br/>━━━━━━━━░
Claude: 64.0%<br/>━━━━░░░░
Science🔬
GPQA<br/><b>85.7%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
GPT: 88.1%<br/>━━━━━━━━━
Gemini: <b>91.9%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
DeepSeek: 82.4%<br/>━━━━━━░░░
Claude: 83.4%<br/>━━━━━━░░░
Logic🧠
HLE<br/><b>42.8%</b><br/>━━━━━━░░░
GPT: 42.7%<br/>━━━━━━░░░
Gemini: <b>45.8%</b><br/>━━━━━━▓░░
DeepSeek: 40.8%<br/>━━━━━━░░░
Claude: 32.0%<br/>━━━━░░░░
Engineering⚙️
SWE-bench<br/><b>73.8%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
GPT: 76.3%<br/>━━━━━━━━━
Gemini: 76.2%<br/>━━━━━━━━░
DeepSeek: 73.1%<br/>━━━━━━░░░
Claude: <b>77.2%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
Agentic🤖
τ²-Bench<br/><b>87.4%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
GPT: 82.7%<br/>━━━━━━░░░
Gemini: <b>90.7%</b><br/>━━━━━━━━━
DeepSeek: 85.3%<br/>━━━━━━━━░
Claude: 87.2%<br/>━━━━━━━━░
| Category | Benchmark | GLM-4.7 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | GPT-5.1 High | DeepSeek-V3.2 | Gemini 3.0 Pro | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Math | AIME 25 | \color{green}{\textbf{95.7}} |
87.0 | 94.0 | 93.1 | 95.0 | Z.ai |
| Coding | LiveCodeBench v6 | 84.9 | 64.0 | 87.0 | 83.3 | \color{green}{\textbf{90.7}} |
Z.ai |
| Science | GPQA-Diamond | 85.7 | 83.4 | 88.1 | 82.4 | \color{green}{\textbf{91.9}} |
Z.ai |
| Logic | HLE (w/ Tools) | 42.8 | 32.0 | 42.7 | 40.8 | \color{green}{\textbf{45.8}} |
Z.ai |
| Engineering | SWE-bench (Ver.) | 73.8% | \color{green}{\textbf{77.2%}} |
76.3% | 73.1% | 76.2% | Z.ai |
| Agentic | τ²-Bench | 87.4% | 87.2% | 82.7% | 85.3% | \color{green}{\textbf{90.7%}} |
Z.ai |
📊 Additional Sources: HuggingFace Model Card | Ollama Library | LLM-Stats Analysis | Vertu Comparison
🛠️ What is GLM-4.7? Technical Specifications and Features
GLM-4.7 is the latest iteration of the General Language Model (GLM) series developed by Beijing-based Zhipu AI.
🚀 Key Technical Highlights (from Z.ai blog)
- Interleaved Thinking: GLM-4.7 thinks before every response and tool calling, improving instruction following and quality of generation.
- Preserved Thinking: In coding agent scenarios, GLM-4.7 automatically retains all thinking blocks across multi-turn conversations, reusing existing reasoning instead of re-deriving from scratch.
- Turn-level Thinking: GLM-4.7 supports per-turn control over reasoning within a session—disable thinking for lightweight requests to reduce latency/cost, enable it for complex tasks to improve accuracy and stability.
- Tool Using: GLM-4.7 achieves significant improvements in tool using, with better performances on benchmarks such as τ²-Bench and on web browsing via BrowseComp.
📈 GLM-4.7 vs GLM-4.6: Key Improvements
Based on Z.ai Technical Report, GLM-4.7 delivers significant gains across core benchmarks compared to its predecessor GLM-4.6:
<EFBFBD> Performance Gains
| Benchmark | GLM-4.6 | GLM-4.7 | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench | 68.0% | 73.8% | +5.8% |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 53.8% | 66.7% | +12.9% |
| Terminal Bench 2.0 | 24.5% | 41.0% | +16.5% |
| HLE (w/ Tools) | 30.4% | 42.8% | +12.4% |
| LiveCodeBench-v6 | 82.8% | 84.9% | +2.1% |
<EFBFBD>️ Enhanced Capabilities
- Interleaved Thinking: GLM-4.7 thinks before every response and tool calling, improving instruction following and quality of generation.
- Preserved Thinking: In coding agent scenarios, GLM-4.7 automatically retains all thinking blocks across multi-turn conversations, reusing existing reasoning instead of re-deriving from scratch.
- Turn-level Thinking: GLM-4.7 supports per-turn control over reasoning within a session—disable thinking for lightweight requests to reduce latency/cost, enable it for complex tasks to improve accuracy and stability.
❓ FAQ: GLM-4.7 and the AI Coding Market
What is best cost-effective AI for coding in 2025? The market for high-performance, budget-friendly AI has expanded significantly in 2025. Leading the pack are GLM-4.7 (Zhipu AI) and DeepSeek-V3.2, both offering performance comparable to Claude Sonnet 4.5 at a fraction of the cost. GLM-4.7 is often preferred for agentic workflows due to its advanced "Preserved Thinking" architecture, while DeepSeek-V3.2 remains a strong choice for raw logic and reasoning tasks.
Is GLM-4.7 better than GPT-5.1 or Claude Sonnet 4.5 for coding? Objectively, Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5.1 currently hold the edge in massive-scale architectural planning and natural language nuance. However, GLM-4.7 has achieved parity or leadership in execution-heavy benchmarks (LiveCodeBench: 84.9) and mathematical reasoning (AIME 25: 95.7). For developers, the choice is often between paying for the absolute peak (Claude/GPT) or achieving 95% of that performance with GLM-4.7 for 1/20th the price.
How much does the GLM-4.7 coding tool cost? GLM-4.7 is available via the Z.ai API platform and through OpenRouter. For detailed pricing, visit Z.ai subscription page.
Who developed GLM-4.7? GLM-4.7 was developed by Zhipu AI, a leading artificial intelligence company based in Beijing, China, emerging from the Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG) at Tsinghua University.
Can I use GLM-4.7 in the US and Europe? Yes, GLM-4.7 is available worldwide through OpenRouter. It is compatible with coding agent frameworks mentioned in the Z.ai blog: Claude Code, Kilo Code, Cline, and Roo Code.
📚 References & Methodology
All data presented in this article is derived from the Z.ai Official Technical Report (December 2025):
- Benchmark Performance: GLM-4.7 compared against GLM-4.6, Kimi K2 Thinking, DeepSeek-V3.2, Gemini 3.0 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4.5, GPT-5 High, and GPT-5.1 High across 17 benchmarks.
- Core Coding: SWE-bench (73.8%, +5.8%), SWE-bench Multilingual (66.7%, +12.9%), Terminal Bench 2.0 (41%, +16.5%).
- Reasoning: HLE (w/ Tools): 42.8%, AIME 2025: 95.7%, GPQA-Diamond: 85.7%.
- Agentic: τ²-Bench: 87.4%, BrowseComp: 52.0%.
- Features: Interleaved Thinking, Preserved Thinking, Turn-level Thinking for stable multi-turn conversations.
- Supported Tools: Claude Code, Kilo Code, Cline, and Roo Code for agent workflows.
🔗 Source Links
- Z.ai Tech Report
- HuggingFace Model Card
- Ollama Library
- LLM-Stats Analysis
- Vertu: GLM-4.7 vs Claude Opus 4.5
The era of "$200 AI coding tax" is over. Join the GLM revolution today.