Sakana: Fugu Max vs Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch)
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-04.
| Sakana: Fugu Max | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | sakana | z-ai |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | - | 70.6 |
| Input Price | $2.00/M | $0.06/M |
| Output Price | $6.00/M | $0.20/M |
| Context Window | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 128,000 | 131,072 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | - | 69.0 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) costs $0.11 and Fugu Max costs $3.50, so GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) is about 31.8 times cheaper for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 1,000,000 and 1,048,576 tokens, about 1,500 and 1,573 pages.
Only GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) offers video input.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) on 20 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).
Fugu Max was released in September 2026 and GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) in August 2026.
Pick GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) if you need lower cost, 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.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Sakana: Fugu Max | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 133 | 142 |
| Code Review | 132 | 145 |
| Code Completion | 118 | 133 |
| Code Refactoring | 136 | 147 |
| Bug Fixing | 136 | 149 |
| Unit Test Generation | 124 | 132 |
| Code Documentation | 130 | 138 |
| Regex Writing | 118 | 126 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 120 | 128 |
| Frontend Component Design | 122 | 130 |
| Data Analysis | 124 | 134 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 133 | 136 |
| ETL Scripting | 128 | 137 |
| JSON Extraction | 122 | 131 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 119 | 129 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 131 | 134 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 131 | 134 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 137 | 149 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 114 | 127 |
| Blog Post Writing | 121 | 130 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →