# Claude Sonnet 5 vs GLM 5.2

On provider list prices, GLM 5.2 costs $1.40 per million input tokens against $3 for Claude Sonnet 5: 2.1x apart. Output is $4.40 against $15 (3.4x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## Specifications

| | Claude Sonnet 5 | GLM 5.2 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | Anthropic | Zai Org |
| Access | API only | Open weights |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 256K tokens |
| List price, input | $3 / M tokens | $1.40 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $15 / M tokens | $4.40 / M tokens |
| Cached input | n/a | $0.26 / M tokens |
| License | Proprietary API | Not listed |
| Fine-tunable | No | Yes |

Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-08. Billed price is list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## What the numbers say

Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $3,220 a month on GLM 5.2 and $8,850 on Claude Sonnet 5 at list: a gap of $5,630, or 2.7x.

Claude Sonnet 5 reads 1M tokens per request against 256K for GLM 5.2, 3.8x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

## Choose Claude Sonnet 5 for

- Judgment calls with policy context
- Customer-facing writing
- Review and escalation flows

## Choose GLM 5.2 for

- Agents on open weights
- Code and structured outputs
- Fine-tuning toward an owned model

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or GLM 5.2?

GLM 5.2, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $1.40/$4.40 per million tokens in and out against $3/$15 for Claude Sonnet 5. Billed on Allocate: $1.50/$4.71 against $3.21/$16.05, list plus 7%.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5: 1,000,000 tokens (1M) against 262,144 (256K) for GLM 5.2.

### Can I fine-tune Claude Sonnet 5 or GLM 5.2?

GLM 5.2 publishes open weights (Not listed) and can be fine-tuned on your own data. Claude Sonnet 5 is a closed model served over API; its weights are not available.

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[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/sonnet-5-vs-z-ai-glm-5-2) · [Claude Sonnet 5](https://allocate.network/models/sonnet-5.md) · [GLM 5.2](https://allocate.network/models/z-ai-glm-5-2.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)