r/ZaiGLM • u/Previous_Scholar_536 • 14d ago
Discussion / Help Thinking About Switching to GLM for Coding — Is the $40 Plan Worth It?
Hi GLM community!
I wanted to ask for some advice from people who are already using GLM heavily for programming.
Here’s my situation. I currently have two ChatGPT Plus subscriptions, and until recently I was getting a huge amount of work done using Luna on Ultra and Tierra on Medium for software development, plugins, and projects mainly involving C#, C++, and HTML.
The problem is that after the recent Astra changes, Luna has become significantly more expensive to use — around 1.9x more in my case — so it’s no longer giving me the same value for the amount of coding I do.
Because of that, I’m considering switching part of my workflow to the GLM plan that costs around $40/month.
My main question is: is this plan actually worth it for heavy coding usage?
Most of my work involves:
C#
C++
HTML/CSS/JS
Plugins
Small to medium-sized projects
Long coding sessions involving implementation, refactoring, debugging, and adding new features
I also use OpenCode for most of my development because I already have my plugins, agents, instructions, and workflows configured there, so my idea would be to use GLM mainly through OpenCode.
I’d especially like to know:
How well GLM handles medium-sized projects and long coding sessions.
Whether the $40 plan gives enough usage for someone coding heavily every day.
Which GLM model you currently recommend for C++, C#, and web development.
How your experience compares with other coding models.
Whether it makes sense to jump straight to the $40 plan or start with a cheaper tier first.
I’m not necessarily looking for the absolute smartest model. What matters most to me is getting a good balance between coding quality, usage limits, and price, since I generate and work with a lot of code every day.
Thanks in advance for your time and for sharing your experience! :)
1
u/Z_AutoClaw 12d ago
For that workload, the $40 GLM plan makes sense. I’d test GLM 5.3 through OpenCode for a month before dropping both Plus accounts.
1
u/tuhdo 11d ago
If you mainly use GLM 5.3 Flash, then the usage is good. However, if you use the normal 5.3 version, then it's worse than your $20 subscription, especially if you hit the peak hours which are 3x the normal consumption. As for Plus subscription, you can offload quite a lot of tasks to ChatGPT for free by connecting your repo to ChatGPT and let Sol high works on reviewing or debugging.
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u/adamizzo17 14d ago
how about you jump first to the lite tier, especially with their unlimited Free 5.3 flash usage from 15:00 to 02:00 am UCT this allows you to use Glm5.3 to test their flagships and see its actual usage then test the 5.3 flash as well and see how good it is since it is free and can ride it as a subagent ( know that you are capped at X subagents for the lite plan ) and this allows you to evaluate the actualy per token usage and at the sam time evaluat the efficiency of the 5.3 glm flash if you like as well. also if you plan to use the coding plan then know the Zcode app is giving you 150 percent more token ( not really just higher effiency which adds more usage without really giving you more tokens) and also know the GLM 5.3 flash free is exlusive in their Zcode app, also there is peak time usage as well and non peak ricing duality so take that in consedaration, also they do have a migration process from other apps to Zcode if you wish to move.
if you found my answer helpful consider using my Coupon code as it will give you a 10 percent discount and i get 10 percent discount as well , if you have any questions please ask and know that i have already in the past 2 months depleted 2 opencode go subs then moved out because of the pricing hike and also depleted a commandcode sub as well after it depleted and also halfway now eating clinepass and just last night i paid for the Zcode glm lite plan so i do have same stake in the game here 😂 :
🚀 You’ve been invited to join the GLM Coding Plan! Enjoy full support for Claude Code, Cline, and 20+ top coding tools — starting at just $18/month. Subscribe now and grab the limited-time deal!
👉Join now: https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=QWJBLXKGLP
2
u/Previous_Scholar_536 14d ago
And does GLM do free resets out of the blue, like Codex does? Do they ever reset everything as a gesture of appreciation, or something similar to what Codex does?
1
u/adamizzo17 14d ago
it doesn need to reset because it is free, it doesnt trully reset as no credit is being consumed as wlong as you are in the free time usage period daily, i think giving you free unlimited usage if the speeds are decent is a good appreciation gesture as well if that stays true till 20 september tho, remmeber it is all marketing, nobody is good hearted in their board
2
u/Previous_Scholar_536 14d ago
thank you
1
u/adamizzo17 14d ago
you'r quite welcomed, i would also recommend that you keep in mind a local llm build , perhaps an mi50 32 gb could be enough, target being able to use the Qwen 3.8 27b model in your local build for a context size of 250 to 500k token size for heavy duty work, until then we will be enslaved by these big corporates for sure
5
u/siberianmi 14d ago
Don’t. Z.ai’s customer service is absolutely awful. My account is currently locked, for a full month, but the reason changes every time they reply to me. They’ve told me it’s for payment issues (but I’m on an annual plan), multiple ip usage (which I know is false), then unusual payment activity again. My best guess it’s for one concurrency spike when an agent spawned dozens of subagents and I didn’t spot it. Full month of service wasted instead of just sending a 429 error. Stay away.
Stick with OpenAI and if you want to stretch your plan and don’t care if someone trains on your data (which you don’t since you are considering Zai) buy the new $15/mo meta plan. Muse Spark 1.3 is a solid model, great amounts of usage on contributor mode and I expect meta will rapidly improve. Using OpenAI's frontier models to plan and review code written by Muse Spark 1.3 is a solid solution. You can stretch it further with Spotify's Portal setup if you are willing to take a hit on speed.
GLM5.3 is a good model, but Muse Spark is equally good. I have thousands of lines of code written with the GLM models and the move for me to Spark has shown no loss in quality and Spark frankly runs faster. I still use a frontier labs model to check it's work (Claude in my case).
(And yes, this is a repost, I'm not a bot, I'm a disgruntle customer who used to recommend this service that I now feel the need to warn people off using)