Real head-to-head · same prompt, one shot

GLM-5.2 vs Grok 4.5

The never-forgets agent — 1M context, open weights. vs xAI's Grok 4.5 — the coding/agentic model, default in Grok Build. Tops SWE Marathon, ~4x more token-efficient than Opus 4.8, ~80 TPS.

Head-to-head verdict: GLM-5.2 wins 26–18 with 2 ties.

GLM-5.2 · context1M tokens
Grok 4.5 · context
GLM-5.2 · priceOpen weights · free for individuals
Grok 4.5 · price$2 / 1M input · $6 / 1M output
GLM-5.2 · vendorZhipu / Z.ai
Grok 4.5 · vendorxAI · Grok Build

What I tested — same prompt, two models

I run the same fixed prompt set through every new model the day it drops — same string, one shot, single HTML file out — and I score the result 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. Below is what came out when I gave the exact same prompts to GLM-5.2 and Grok 4.5, side by side, on 46 shared tasks inside the Agent Operating System.

Both models were given identical prompts inside the Agent Operating System — no help, no iteration, no "best of N" tricks. I run each prompt once, save the HTML file the model produces, and score it 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The scoring is mine. The verdicts below are pulled from my source comparison guides at agentos.guide where I publish every score and the reasoning behind it.

GLM-5.2 · Default model inside Agent OS for any task that touches a long context — codebase Q&A, multi-file refactors, agent memory replay.

Grok 4.5 · Benched one-shot on the same GoldieBench game prompts as the field, with the threejs-game-director patterns baked into each prompt; weak builds iterated by Grok 4.5 itself (the model authors every fix, never hand-patched). Wired into the Agent OS as the newest engine.

Side-by-side on 49 shared tasks

Click any cell to play that model's actual one-shot attempt. Medals are derived from my 0–10 scores per task (highest = 🥇, second = 🥈, third = 🥉).

Task ↓
GLM-5.2
Grok 4.5
Game
GLM-5.2 on Arcade
🥈Grok 4.5 on Arcade
Game
GLM-5.2 on Crypt
🥈Grok 4.5 on Crypt
Game
GLM-5.2 on Dogfight
🥈Grok 4.5 on Dogfight
GLM-5.2 on Dragonflight
🥈Grok 4.5 on Dragonflight
GLM-5.2 on Dragonrealm
🥇Grok 4.5 on Dragonrealm
Game
🥈GLM-5.2 on Flightsim
🥈Grok 4.5 on Flightsim
Game
GLM-5.2 on Game
🥈Grok 4.5 on Game
Game
🥈GLM-5.2 on Gtadrive
🥈Grok 4.5 on Gtadrive
Game
GLM-5.2 on Gtafoot
🥉Grok 4.5 on Gtafoot
GLM-5.2 on Neonblaster
🥈Grok 4.5 on Neonblaster
Game
🥇GLM-5.2 on Neoncity
🥇Grok 4.5 on Neoncity
Game
GLM-5.2 on Neonracer
🥈Grok 4.5 on Neonracer
GLM-5.2 on Nordiccrypt
🥈Grok 4.5 on Nordiccrypt
Game
🥉GLM-5.2 on Outrun
🥇Grok 4.5 on Outrun
Game
GLM-5.2 on Parachute
🥈Grok 4.5 on Parachute
Game
GLM-5.2 on Pool
🥈Grok 4.5 on Pool
Game
GLM-5.2 on Racing
🥈Grok 4.5 on Racing
Game
GLM-5.2 on Raycaster
🥈Grok 4.5 on Raycaster
Game
GLM-5.2 on Rpg
🥈Grok 4.5 on Rpg
Game
GLM-5.2 on Skyrim
🥈Grok 4.5 on Skyrim
GLM-5.2 on Twilightvale
🥈Grok 4.5 on Twilightvale
Game
GLM-5.2 on Voxelcraft
🥈Grok 4.5 on Voxelcraft
Page
🥈GLM-5.2 on Aipbpromo
🥈Grok 4.5 on Aipbpromo
Page
🥇GLM-5.2 on Landing
🥈Grok 4.5 on Landing

Where GLM-5.2 beat Grok 4.5

The tasks where I gave GLM-5.2 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.

Gtafoot Game
GLM-5.2 7.5 · Grok 4.5 5.5 (+2.0)

What I saw: 43KB · plays clean · plain (re-rolled)

Fluid Sim
GLM-5.2 9.0 · Grok 4.5 7.6 (+1.4) · winner · best liquid

What I saw: GLM filled the bowl with glowing liquid that actually sloshes — the most convincing 'liquid in a bowl'. Opus's particles glowed but clumped to the centre. Kimi's collapsed into a tiny blob.

Landing Page
GLM-5.2 9.0 · Grok 4.5 7.6 (+1.4) · tie · top

What I saw: Funniest result of the lot: GLM and Opus independently produced near-identical premium 'Introducing Nova 1 — Intelligence, reimagined / distilled' keynote pages — gradient hero, full nav, pricing tiers. A dead heat. Kimi's was a plainer set of feature cards.

Neoncity Game
GLM-5.2 9.0 · Grok 4.5 8.0 (+1.0) · winner · cinematic

What I saw: GLM's is the most cinematic — neon towers, a setting sun, Japanese signage and a flight HUD, like a frame from a film. Opus's is a clean canyon of lit skyscrapers racing to a vanishing point. Kimi leaned into the synthwave sun and grid more than the city itself. GLM wins the skyline.

GLM-5.2 8.0 · Grok 4.5 7.0 (+1.0)

What I saw: 30KB · plays clean · three, webgl

Where Grok 4.5 beat GLM-5.2

The tasks where I gave Grok 4.5 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.

Aurora Visual
Grok 4.5 8.2 · GLM-5.2 7.0 (+1.2)

What I saw: One-shot: beautiful animated northern-lights over mountains, intensity/flow sliders, atmospheric.

Raycaster Game
Grok 4.5 7.5 · GLM-5.2 6.5 (+1.0)

What I saw: One-shot: Wolfenstein-style raycaster maze + gun viewmodel, 'breach the maze' HUD (the doom genre, done right here).

Grok 4.5 8.3 · GLM-5.2 7.5 (+0.8)

What I saw: One-shot: progressive path tracer — glossy spheres, soft shadows, accumulating noise on a checker floor; impressive.

Cloth Sim
Grok 4.5 7.8 · GLM-5.2 7.0 (+0.8)

What I saw: One-shot: real-feel cloth simulation draping over a glossy sphere, physics sliders.

Grok 4.5 8.2 · GLM-5.2 7.5 (+0.7)

What I saw: One-shot: Skyrim-style frozen open world that actually walks — multi-part third-person adventurer (hooded head, belt torso, arms, legs, sheathed sword), rolling snow terrain, near/mid/far low-poly pines, mountain silhouettes, health/stamina meters + compass + sword-state chip + d…

Strengths & weaknesses I logged

GLM-5.2

Strengths

  • 1M-token context window — best-in-class long-document and large-codebase work
  • Open weights — runs locally, no vendor lock-in, no token meter
  • Top of the bench for cinematic visuals (neon city, synthwave, voxel runner)

Trade-offs

  • Faceplanted on the Goldie Bench raycaster — the engine was great but it spawned the player inside a wall
  • First-shot reliability lags Opus by a hair on consistency

Grok 4.5

Strengths

  • SWE Marathon resolution #1: 29.0% (Opus 4.8 26.0, Fable 24.0)
  • ~4.2x more token-efficient than Opus 4.8 on SWE-Bench Pro (15,954 vs 67,020 avg output tokens); ~80 TPS
  • Strong one-shot game builds: gorgeous multi-part heroes + layered worlds + cohesive HUDs first try (dragonrealm, crypt, skyrim)

Trade-offs

  • Raycaster/FPS (doom) under-renders + walks out of bounds one-shot; needed multiple self-fix passes
  • Occasional TDZ/init bug blanks a build to black (racing) — recovered by the model itself in one pass
  • Not available in the EU until mid-July 2026

Pricing & context — the spec sheet

Spec GLM-5.2 Grok 4.5
VendorZhipu / Z.aixAI · Grok Build
Context window1,000,000 tokensxAI's smartest model, built for coding + agentic tasks; trained alongside Cursor. Default model in Grok Build. Benched here via OpenRouter (x-ai/grok-4.5).
PriceOpen weights · free for individuals$2 / 1M input · $6 / 1M output
Pricing detailOpen-weights release: weights downloadable from Hugging Face for self-hosting, or runnable for free on z.ai for individuals (commercial use has separate licensing).~4.2x fewer output tokens than Opus 4.8 on SWE-Bench Pro (15,954 vs 67,020 avg) and served at ~80 TPS, so real cost/latency is well below the sticker. Free for a limited time in Grok Build + Cursor.
Release2026-06-142026-07-08
Bench coverage47/47 scored · avg 7.77/1048/50 scored · avg 7.60/10

The verdict — which should you pick?

Across 46 scored shared tasks, the averages are essentially tied — GLM-5.2 7.76 vs Grok 4.5 7.61. This isn't the comparison where one wins; it's the comparison where you pick based on context, pricing, and what you're actually trying to ship.

If you only run one of these inside your stack, the head-to-head average above is the call. If you can run both, my honest play is to wire GLM-5.2 and Grok 4.5 both into the Agent Operating System and dispatch each from the kanban by task type — long-context agent loops — pasting a whole codebase into one prompt → GLM-5.2, one-shot end-to-end app + game builds from a single prompt → Grok 4.5. That's the same setup I run for the 4,000+ founders inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

FAQ — GLM-5.2 vs Grok 4.5

Which is better, GLM-5.2 or Grok 4.5?

On Goldie Bench, GLM-5.2 averages 7.76/10 across the shared tasks, with 5 gold, 4 silver, 1 bronze overall. Grok 4.5 averages 7.61/10, with 12 gold, 34 silver, 2 bronze. GLM-5.2 wins the head-to-head 26–18.

How much does GLM-5.2 cost vs Grok 4.5?

GLM-5.2: Open-weights release: weights downloadable from Hugging Face for self-hosting, or runnable for free on z.ai for individuals (commercial use has separate licensing). Grok 4.5: ~4.2x fewer output tokens than Opus 4.8 on SWE-Bench Pro (15,954 vs 67,020 avg) and served at ~80 TPS, so real cost/latency is well below the sticker. Free for a limited time in Grok Build + Cursor.

What's the context window for GLM-5.2 vs Grok 4.5?

GLM-5.2 has a 1,000,000 tokens context window. Grok 4.5 has a xAI's smartest model, built for coding + agentic tasks; trained alongside Cursor. Default model in Grok Build. Benched here via OpenRouter (x-ai/grok-4.5). context window.

When should I pick GLM-5.2 over Grok 4.5?

Pick GLM-5.2 for: Long-context agent loops — pasting a whole codebase into one prompt; Cinematic visual builds — landing pages, voxel scenes, synthwave runners; Anyone who needs to run a frontier coder locally for $0. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Faceplanted on the {{SITE_NAME}} raycaster — the engine was great but it spawned the player inside a wall; First-shot reliability lags Opus by a hair on consistency.

When should I pick Grok 4.5 over GLM-5.2?

Pick Grok 4.5 for: One-shot end-to-end app + game builds from a single prompt; Cost/latency-sensitive agentic coding loops (token-efficient + fast); Office-work automation (Excel/PowerPoint/Word via Grok Build). The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Raycaster/FPS (doom) under-renders + walks out of bounds one-shot; needed multiple self-fix passes; Occasional TDZ/init bug blanks a build to black (racing) — recovered by the model itself in one pass; Not available in the EU until mid-July 2026.

How does Goldie Bench score GLM-5.2 vs Grok 4.5?

Every demo on this page was built by Julian Goldie inside the Agent Operating System — same fixed prompt for both models, one shot, single HTML file out. Each result gets a 0–10 score on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The highest score on each task gets gold; second gets silver; third gets bronze. See methodology for full provenance.

The same stack Julian uses

Run this stack yourself.

Every demo on this bench was built inside the Agent Operating System — one prompt, one shot, single HTML file out. The Agent OS, the prompts, the templates, the weekly walkthroughs and 4,000+ founders shipping with it every day all live inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

4,000+founders
258documented wins
38countries
$59/momonthly