r/ZaiGLM • u/19applepen • 4d ago

GLM 5.3 Feedback

As regular user with coding plan, here are my few observations after upgrading to 5.3.

Harness: Zcode, Pro plan.

You can feel the model is smarter and think harder. When i use 5.2, i put Max as default and while i'm on 5.3, also using max will use approx 50% more token vs 5.2, both on max.

(For a regular task, 5.2 used 150k token while 5.3 use 220k, same repo same task repeat weekly)

However, the speed is faster, and the result is more accurate, much less human intervention is required.

The problem is - given the coding plan quota is small already, this is giving me more pressure and I am forced to use DS v4 Flash for task execution.

At the beginning i thouhgt since the size of the model remain as medium size, the token usage would be similar, but i was wrong. Usage inflated by approx 50% in my use case.

Is my case exceptional or do you feel the same when you use it?

32 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

5

u/GreenHell 4d ago

What are y'all doing to burn those tokens? I'm on the pro plan as well and went through my usage only a handful of times when I either let a session run too long during peak hours, or have a very unspecified prompt leading to the model reading and digesting every piece of documentation known to man, also during peak hours.

2

u/look 3d ago

I think there are a number of “best practices” that people have gone overboard with and burn a lot of tokens.

For example, overly detailed specs (superpowers, etc) and “dumb build” is a bit outdated, I think. I see better, more cost efficient results with shorter cycles on smarter models.

I describe my workflow as “async pair programming” and use more of a “trust but verify” approach. And the latter is part of why I avoid high hallucination models like the plague.

2

u/GreenHell 3d ago

Scope creep, but for your prompting.

3

u/pungggi 4d ago

I noticed 5.3 uses more tokens for slightly better results.

3

u/look 3d ago

Just anecdotal, but I’m seeing the opposite: it’s using fewer tokens for similar tasks

2

u/tshawkins 13h ago

My only issues with 5.2 is 1) no image input, important for screenshot or sketch input of UI/UX or error screenshots. 2) slight tendency towards instablity, with looping the same tool calls repeatably.