GLM-5.3: what the license allows, and what the maker charges
thecontinuitylayer.com/open-models/glm-5-3Z.ai's current flagship open release, a 753B-parameter model post-trained from the same base as GLM-5.2; GLM-5.3-Flash is the 320B-total, 18B-active multimodal model in the same series.
- 1Partly
Is GLM-5.3 under an open license?
Partly, by Z.ai's own page.
GLM-5.3 is under the GLM-5.3 License, an MIT-style grant with one added condition: a model-as-a-service operator whose revenue exceeds 10 billion US dollars over 12 months must pass Z.AI's security review before commercial use. GLM-5.3-Flash is under MIT.
Yes means: The weights are under an OSI-approved license such as Apache-2.0 or MIT. Partly means the maker's own license with conditions, such as a user cap or an acceptable-use clause; no means research or non-commercial use only.
- 2Yes
Can you download GLM-5.3's weights?
Yes, by Z.ai's own page.
GLM-5.3 and GLM-5.3-Flash weights are on Hugging Face under zai-org, each with a BF16 repository beside the FP8 one.
Yes means: The maker's page links the weights for download with nothing more than a click-through license. Partly means an access form, an approval step, or only some sizes released.
- 3Not stated
Does the maker state GLM-5.3's context window?
Z.ai's pages do not say.
The card gives no context window for the model; it lists only evaluation settings of 300,000, 400K and 1M tokens, and the Z.ai pricing page gives no context length.
Yes means: A token count for the context window is on the maker's page or model card.
- 4Partly
Does the maker say what it takes to run GLM-5.3 on your own machine?
Partly, by Z.ai's own page.
753B total parameters with no active count on the card and no GPU memory figure; deployment is listed for SGLang, vLLM, TokenSpeed, Transformers, KTransformers, Unsloth and Ascend NPU, with community quantizations for llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio.
Yes means: The page states the parameter count and the memory or hardware it needs. Partly means the parameter count alone.
- 5Yes
Does the maker publish a price for its hosted GLM-5.3?
Yes, by Z.ai's own page.
Z.ai's pricing page lists GLM-5.3 at $1.40 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens, cached input $0.26; GLM-5.3-Flash at $0.15 in and $0.50 out.
Yes means: A per-token price on the maker's own pricing page. Partly means a hosted version exists but the price sits behind sign-in or a sales call.
- 6Partly
Does the maker train on your prompts when you use its hosted GLM-5.3?
Partly, by Z.ai's own page.
Z.ai's privacy policy (last updated 29 September 2025) lists training among its improvement purposes for individual users; for API customers the Data Processing Addendum says "The Company do not store any of the content the Customer or its End Users provide" and does not mention training.
Yes means: Here no is the good answer: the maker's page says what you send its API is not used for training. Yes means it is unless you opt out; partly means it depends on the plan or the page does not give the default.
- 7Partly
Can you fine-tune GLM-5.3 and keep the result?
Partly, by Z.ai's own page.
The license grants the right "to run, deploy, fine-tune, or otherwise modify the Software and create derivative works from it" and to copy, distribute, sublicense and sell, with the notice kept in copies; the 10 billion dollar model-as-a-service clause is the only threshold.
Yes means: The license allows fine-tuning and the fine-tuned weights are yours to keep and share. Partly means conditions follow the derivative, or a hosted fine-tune you cannot download.
License as stated: GLM-5.3 License; MIT for GLM-5.3-Flash.. Every grade above is read from Z.ai's own page on the day shown. If a page has changed, tell us.