Head to head

Kimi K3 vs GLM 5.3 Flash

Kimi K3 scores higher on 2 of the 2 benchmarks both models publish. The widest gap is on Terminal-Bench, where Kimi K3 leads by 4.0 points. Both have open weights; GLM 5.3 Flash is far lighter to host, needing about 221 GB at 4-bit against 1.9 TB for Kimi K3.

Kimi K3Moonshot AI · OpenLLM Buddy catalog90.6compositeGLM 5.3 FlashZhipu AI (Z.ai) · OpenLLM Buddy catalog—composite

Shared benchmarks

Raw published scores; the higher score on each row is highlighted. LMArena Elo is a human-preference vote and is not counted as a win.

Should you pick Kimi K3 or GLM 5.3 Flash?

Pick Kimi K3 if…

  • You care most about Terminal-Bench, where it scores at least 2 points higher.
  • People prefer its answers in blind chats: LMArena Elo 1488 against 1477.
  • You want it running in minutes on a dedicated GPU through OpenLLM Buddy, in an uncensored build.

Pick GLM 5.3 Flash if…

  • You want the lighter model to host: about 221 GB at 4-bit against 1.9 TB.
  • Cost matters: $0.500 per million output tokens against $15.00.
  • You want it running in minutes on a dedicated GPU through OpenLLM Buddy, in an uncensored build.
  • You need a permissive license: it ships under MIT.

Hardware and cost to run

Kimi K3

Even at 4-bit it needs about 1.9 TB (Multiple nodes (over 1.1 TB)), well beyond a home workstation, so most people run it on rented multi-GPU servers. Full BF16 precision needs about 6.4 TB (Multiple nodes (over 1.1 TB)).

On OpenLLM Buddy: Kimi-K3-Uncensored-GGUF runs on 8× H100 80GB as a GGUF quantized build, with an OpenAI-compatible API and no per-token fees. Prices start at $422 USD for 11 hours.

Deploy Kimi K3
Full GPU memory table for Kimi K3

GLM 5.3 Flash

Even at 4-bit it needs about 221 GB (4× H100 (320 GB)), well beyond a home workstation, so most people run it on rented multi-GPU servers. Full BF16 precision needs about 736 GB (8× H200 (1,128 GB)).

On OpenLLM Buddy: GLM-5.3-Flash-Uncensored-FP8 runs on 4× H200 141GB as an FP8 build, with an OpenAI-compatible API and no per-token fees. Prices start at $280 USD for 11 hours.

Deploy GLM 5.3 Flash
Full GPU memory table for GLM 5.3 Flash

Category profile

Category index uses every test each model reports, not only the shared ones.

ReasoningCodingAgenticKnowledge
Kimi K3GLM 5.3 Flash
Reasoning82.4—
Coding97.593.0
Agentic89.579.0
Knowledge93.1—

Specs side by side

Kimi K3GLM 5.3 Flash
LabMoonshot AIZhipu AI (Z.ai)
WeightsOpenOpen
Released2026-07-272026-08-26
Parameters2.8T total, 104B active (MoE)320B total, 18B active (MoE)
Context1M1M
LicenseKimi K3 License (custom)MIT
4-bit memory1.9 TB · Multiple nodes (over 1.1 TB)221 GB · 4× H100 (320 GB)
API price$3.00 in / $15.00 out per 1M tokens$0.150 in / $0.500 out per 1M tokens
API speed66 tok/s75 tok/s

Related comparisons

Sources

ModelTestScoreSettingSource
Kimi K3Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)56.0HLE-Full, with tools, max effortKimi K3 model card (Hugging Face)
GLM 5.3 FlashHumanity's Last Exam (with tools)55.3with tools (page attributes to HF official evaluation section)CometAPI GLM-5.3-Flash spec page (secondary)
Kimi K3Terminal-Bench88.3Terminal-Bench 2.1, max effortKimi K3 model card (Hugging Face)
GLM 5.3 FlashTerminal-Bench84.3Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Z.ai vendor-reported)DataNorth news (quoting Z.ai official results)
Kimi K3LMArena Text Elo1488LMArena text overall, 'Kimi K3 (Max)', ±4, as of 2026-10-27Arena (LMArena) text leaderboard
GLM 5.3 FlashLMArena Text Elo1477LMArena text overall, 'GLM-5.3-Flash', ±5, as of 2026-10-27Arena (LMArena) text leaderboard

Scores are published results from model cards, lab reports, and public leaderboards, each linked to its source. Settings such as thinking mode or test version differ between sources and are shown next to each score. OpenLLM Buddy catalog models are uncensored fine-tunes; their scores are those of the official base model. Data collected 2026-10-30. How the index works