---
title: "Check GLM 4.5 Air — is it still the one to buy · Undominated.ai"
canonical: https://undominated.ai/check/z-ai__glm-4.5-air/
description: "GLM 4.5 Air: whether anything in this catalogue is both better and cheaper, as of Aug 28, 2026. Unrated stays unrated."
---

# Check GLM 4.5 Air — is it still the one to buy · Undominated.ai

> GLM 4.5 Air: whether anything in this catalogue is both better and cheaper, as of Aug 28, 2026. Unrated stays unrated.

# Check a model

Name what you are paying for. The plot is the same Pareto field as the frontier page. The answer is a computation on this catalogue, not an opinion. Bookmark the URL.

9 undominated of 134 · Aug 28, 2026

As of Aug 28, 2026, GLM 4.5 Air is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Hy3 scores 58.4 higher and costs 53% less, with a covering envelope. 9 of 134 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

 Current model

GLM 4.5 Air

 Balanced

3 tokens in per 1 out

 Balanced Summarise Chat Code gen Agentic
 Monthly spend (USD) Used only to say how many months a named switching cost would take to earn back. Leave blank to skip. Switching cost (USD) 134 rated, priced standard models. Chartreuse is the frontier. Cobalt is the model you named, when it is not on the staircase.

Hy3 is both better and cheaper than GLM 4.5 Air.

 [GLM 4.5 Air](/models/z-ai__glm-4.5-air/)

LMArena Elo

 **

1382.8

Effective $/M · Balanced

 **

$0.310/M

 [Hy3](/models/tencent__hy3/)

LMArena Elo

 **

1441.2

Effective $/M · Balanced

 **

$0.144/M

## Envelope-safe replacements

Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.

| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hy3 | 1441.2 +58.4 | $0.144/M | 53% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1431.6 +48.8 | $0.101/M | 67% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.3 +44.5 | $0.175/M | 44% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1424.6 +41.8 | $0.290/M | 6% |

## Higher score, lower price, named losses

Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.

| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gemma 4 31B | 1441.7 | $0.153/M | max output |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1434.6 | $0.138/M | max output |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp | 1424.4 | $0.305/M | max output |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | 1419.3 | $0.205/M | max output, reasoning |
| Step 3.5 Flash | 1403.8 | $0.150/M | max output |

Copy watch URL [Open the frontier](/frontier/)

This page does not mail you. The URL is the watch: same model, same mix, current catalogue.