GLM-5.3-Flash vs Grok 4.6 Xhigh: price, speed and benchmarks

Grok 4.6 Xhigh leads the intelligence index 31.0 to 27.8. GLM-5.3-Flash costs 92% less on blended price. Price per token, response speed and when to pick each.

Metric	GLM-5.3-Flash	Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)
Intelligence Index	27.8	31.0
Input price (per 1M tokens)	$0.15	$2.00
Output price (per 1M tokens)	$0.50	$6.00
Output speed (tokens/s)	56	62
Time to first token	1.6s	47s
Release date	2026-08-26	2026-08-12

Metric

GLM-5.3-Flash

Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)

Intelligence Index

27.8

31.0

Input price (per 1M tokens)

$0.15

$2.00

Output price (per 1M tokens)

$0.50

$6.00

Output speed (tokens/s)

Time to first token

1.6s

47s

Release date

2026-08-26

2026-08-12

Here is how GLM-5.3-Flash, built by Z AI, lines up against Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) from SpaceXAI. The sharpest difference is price: GLM-5.3-Flash costs $0.50 per million output tokens, against $6.00 for Grok 4.6 Xhigh. Everything below is read from the benchmark, price and speed data in Franklin AI's catalogue; nothing here comes from a hands-on test.

Price per token

Per million tokens, GLM-5.3-Flash charges $0.15 for input and $0.50 for output, while Grok 4.6 Xhigh charges $2.00 and $6.00. For output tokens, Grok 4.6 Xhigh is 12 times the price of GLM-5.3-Flash.

For a sample workload of 1 million input tokens and 200,000 output tokens, GLM-5.3-Flash would cost $0.25 and Grok 4.6 Xhigh $3.20, a difference of $2.95. A bigger example, writing 2,000 drafts of 2,000 output tokens from 300-token prompts, costs $2.09 on GLM-5.3-Flash and $25.20 on Grok 4.6 Xhigh: a gap of $23.11. On a 3:1 blend of input to output tokens, that works out to $0.238 versus $3.00 per million.

How the intelligence index compares

Grok 4.6 Xhigh comes out ahead on the intelligence index, 31.0 to 27.8. That is a clear margin for an index that averages many evaluations.

For context, that places GLM-5.3-Flash 63rd and Grok 4.6 Xhigh 49th out of 109 scored models still on offer.

Specialist coding and math indexes are missing for both, so treat the overall score as the only capability signal here.

Is the price in proportion?

Dividing the blended price by the intelligence index gives a rough cost per point: $0.0085 for GLM-5.3-Flash and $0.097 for Grok 4.6 Xhigh, per million tokens. Grok 4.6 Xhigh costs 11 times as much per point, which is the price of its lead.

Which is newer

The release dates are August 12, 2026 for Grok 4.6 Xhigh and August 26, 2026 for GLM-5.3-Flash, 14 days apart. They are effectively contemporaries.

Waiting time

GLM-5.3-Flash generates about 56 tokens per second and Grok 4.6 Xhigh about 62 tokens per second. That makes Grok 4.6 Xhigh roughly 1.1 times as fast at writing. Before any text appears, GLM-5.3-Flash takes 1.6 seconds and Grok 4.6 Xhigh 47 seconds. On total time, GLM-5.3-Flash wins at ordinary lengths; Grok 4.6 Xhigh's higher throughput only pays off beyond about 26,000 tokens. A first-token wait of that length suits background work better than live conversation.

Put together, an 800-token answer would take about 16 seconds from GLM-5.3-Flash and 60 seconds from Grok 4.6 Xhigh, counting the first-token wait.

Frequently asked questions

Is Grok 4.6 Xhigh better than GLM-5.3-Flash?

Not across the board: Grok 4.6 Xhigh scores higher on the intelligence index, 31.0 to 27.8; GLM-5.3-Flash is 92% cheaper on blended price; Grok 4.6 Xhigh streams output 1.1 times as fast; and GLM-5.3-Flash reaches its first token sooner.

Which is cheaper, GLM-5.3-Flash or Grok 4.6 Xhigh?

GLM-5.3-Flash is cheaper on a blended basis. GLM-5.3-Flash lists $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Grok 4.6 Xhigh lists $2.00 and $6.00. For 1 million input and 200,000 output tokens that is $0.25 against $3.20.

Was this comparison tested by hand?

The figures are the recorded benchmark, price and speed data in Franklin AI's model catalogue. This page is written from that data automatically; neither model was tested by hand for it.

Which is faster, GLM-5.3-Flash or Grok 4.6 Xhigh?

Grok 4.6 Xhigh generates output faster, at 62 tokens per second against 56 tokens per second. GLM-5.3-Flash reaches its first token sooner (1.6 seconds against 47 seconds). Counting the first-token wait, GLM-5.3-Flash finishes first for any reply shorter than about 26,000 tokens.

Are GLM-5.3-Flash and Grok 4.6 Xhigh from the same company?

GLM-5.3-Flash is made by Z AI and Grok 4.6 Xhigh by SpaceXAI. GLM-5.3-Flash was released on August 26, 2026 and Grok 4.6 Xhigh on August 12, 2026.

Final whistle

In one line: GLM-5.3-Flash has more going for it here, but Grok 4.6 Xhigh is not without an argument. Pick Grok 4.6 Xhigh if you need the higher overall score (31.0 against 27.8) and you generate very long outputs, beyond about 26,000 tokens. Pick GLM-5.3-Flash if cost matters ($0.50 against $6.00 per million output tokens) and users are waiting on the first word.

Where the numbers come from

The scores, speed and prices in this comparison come from independent third-party model evaluations that Franklin AI syncs each day, and the article was written from a snapshot of them. For the latest results, open the GLM-5.3-Flash and Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) pages. The AI Benchmark methodology explains how that data is collected and shown.