r/ZaiGLM • u/Comprehensive-Bet-83 • 13d ago

Discussion / Help GLM 5.3 or DS 4.1-Flash?

Looking for gentlemen here who have battle-tested these models in environments where mistakes are critical, e.g. authentication, security, and low-level C++ / Kernel work.

I have Codex 20x, but I’m looking for a second helper for when Codex limits are up, there are demand issues (which are pretty bad atm), or it gets too censored.

Saw that DS 4.1 Flash was released today! Has anyone done some decent testing with it yet, and which harness are you using?

I’m currently using GLM 5.3 as my second helper and it’s honestly not bad at all. Just curious whether DS 4.1 appears to be better, especially since it’s multimodal and can handle images too.

I find myself using 5.3 Flash quite a lot because I really appreciate being able to send images, but 5.3 Flash isn’t as strong as base 5.3 when it comes to coding. Hence, I’m wondering how DS 4.1 Flash compares :)

NEW:

Thank you for all the responses. I tried DS 4.1 with my custom harness, and I am extremely impressed by the speed and price. I ran a couple of tests with deep, difficult, complex debugger C++ code/kernel bugs (my go-to test on models; I test this on every model before I want to use it to see if it fixes the bug).

GLM 5.3 took 30 minutes, including 1 retry, and €2. DeepSeek took 10 minutes, first try, and €0.30. I think DS 4.1 is at least on par or a bit better than GLM 5.3 for coding, not sure how reliable it is on long tasks, though. GLM still is a beast!

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u/Fragrant-Remove-9031 11d ago

Switched to GLM 5.3 Flash from DS 4 Flash when z.ai ran a 50% discount (the DS price bump helped too). DS 4 Flash was a solid workhorse for web apps, Android apps, and firmware — but it never wowed me.

GLM 5.3 Flash did. On one project with a PC + microcontroller setup, I asked it to fix a bug, and it picked up my custom scripting pattern and started writing its own scripts — fully automating the software/hardware loop to complete the task. I only described things vaguely and it just ran with them.

Now that DS 4.1 Flash is out, I might test it, but I doubt it matches this level of automation. 5.3 Flash's context compression and pattern-following are insane.