The closest alternative to GLM 5 is Qwen3.5 397B A17B — comparable intelligence (40.1 vs 40.6); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.600/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B is the closest alternative to GLM 5, with an Intelligence Index of 40.1 (GLM 5 scores 40.6) at $0.390 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.600 for GLM 5, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to GLM 5 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.