PrismML: Ternary Bonsai 2 27B vs Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash

For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Ternary Bonsai 2 27B costs $0.20 and GLM 5.3 Flash costs $0.28, so Ternary Bonsai 2 27B is about 1.4 times cheaper for the same work.

GLM 5.3 Flash reads up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text, against about 393 pages for Ternary Bonsai 2 27B.

Only GLM 5.3 Flash offers video input.

Across the 18 tasks where they differ, GLM 5.3 Flash on 18 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).

Ternary Bonsai 2 27B was released in September 2026 and GLM 5.3 Flash in August 2026.

Pick Ternary Bonsai 2 27B if you need lower cost; pick GLM 5.3 Flash if you need long documents, video input 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.