inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL vs Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch)
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-04.
| inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | inclusionai | z-ai |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 38.6 | 70.6 |
| Input Price | $0.02/M | $0.06/M |
| Output Price | $0.06/M | $0.20/M |
| Context Window | 262,144 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 32,768 | 131,072 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 40.5 | 69.0 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Ling 3.0 Flash VL costs $0.036 and GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) costs $0.11, so Ling 3.0 Flash VL is about 3.0 times cheaper for the same work.
GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) reads up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text, against about 393 pages for Ling 3.0 Flash VL.
On our blended benchmark score GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) leads 70.6 to 38.6.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Ling 3.0 Flash VL scores higher on 2 (JSON Extraction, Bulk Data Labeling), GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) on 18 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).
Ling 3.0 Flash VL was released in September 2026 and GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) in August 2026.
Pick Ling 3.0 Flash VL if you need lower cost; pick GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) if you need long documents, benchmark performance or the stronger all-round task scores.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 136 | 142 |
| Code Review | 134 | 145 |
| Code Completion | 130 | 133 |
| Code Refactoring | 134 | 147 |
| Bug Fixing | 138 | 149 |
| Unit Test Generation | 126 | 132 |
| Code Documentation | 130 | 138 |
| Regex Writing | 124 | 126 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 122 | 128 |
| Frontend Component Design | 126 | 130 |
| Data Analysis | 130 | 134 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 130 | 136 |
| ETL Scripting | 128 | 137 |
| JSON Extraction | 132 | 131 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 130 | 129 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 130 | 134 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 130 | 134 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 136 | 149 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 126 | 127 |
| Blog Post Writing | 124 | 130 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →