[cmrdporcupine]

Is there any advantage to their fixed payment plans at all vs just using this model via 3rd party providers via openrouter, given how relatively cheap they tend to be on a per-token basis?

Providers like DeepInfra are already giving access to 5.1 https://deepinfra.com/zai-org/GLM-5.1

$1.40 in $4.40 out $0.26 cached

/ 1M tokens

That's more expensive than other models, but not terrible, and will go down over time, and is far far cheaper than Opus or Sonnet or GPT.

I haven't had any bad luck with DeepInfra in particular with quantization or rate limiting. But I've only heard bad things about people who used z.ai directly.

[Lalabadie]

I use GLM 5 Turbo sporadically for a client, and my Openrouter expense might climb over a dollar per day if I insist. At about 20 work days per month it's an easy choice.

[cmrdporcupine]

I'm not certain if you're saying it's an easy choice to go with or without the fixed cost coding plan.

I see it's $81/quarter, but it's also not clear to me from what I've seen from people's postings that it actually gives you immediate access to new models as they come and whether there's usage limits and such.

The other advantage of just using API is that one is free to use other less expensive, free, or local models for more routine grunt work stuff

[Lalabadie]

For usage that's regular instead of bursty, I suppose the subscription is a no-brainer. Daily agents dev, -claw scenarios, etc.

My total usage might be about equivalent to the sub price, so what I get in return is the absence of quotas for the few periods I need GLM to be available without restriction.

In sporadic use, I wouldn't improve my spend by paying a subscription then also paying metered when I cross the hours/day/week quota, only to leave the rest of the sub unused most of the month.