Model Comparison
GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwen3 VL 4B ThinkingWhich is better in 2026?
GLM-4.5-Air significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Verdict: GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking — which is better?
GLM-4.5-Air (by Zhipu AI) and Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking (by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team) are two of the AI models people compare most. Here is how they stack up on benchmarks, price and capabilities, and which one to pick in 2026.
GLM-4.5-Air outperforms in 3 benchmarks (BFCL-v3, GPQA, MMLU-Pro), while Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking is better at 0 benchmarks. GLM-4.5-Air significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Choose GLM-4.5-Air if…
- you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 3 of 3 shared benchmarks
Choose Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking if…
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2025
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
GLM-4.5-Air outperforms in 3 benchmarks (BFCL-v3, GPQA, MMLU-Pro), while Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking is better at 0 benchmarks.
GLM-4.5-Air significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Arena Performance
Human preference votes
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
GLM-4.5-Air has 102.0B more parameters than Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking, making it 2550.0% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking specifies input context (262,144 tokens). Only Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking specifies output context (262,144 tokens).
Input Capabilities
Supported data types and modalities
Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking supports multimodal inputs, whereas GLM-4.5-Air does not.
Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
GLM-4.5-Air
Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking
License
Usage and distribution terms
GLM-4.5-Air is licensed under MIT, while Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
MIT
Open weights
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
GLM-4.5-Air was released on 2025-07-28, while Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking was released on 2025-09-22.
Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking is 2 months newer than GLM-4.5-Air.
Jul 28, 2025
10 months ago
Sep 22, 2025
8 months ago
1mo newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Outputs Comparison
Key Takeaways
GLM-4.5-Air
View detailsZhipu AI
Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking
View detailsAlibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Detailed Comparison
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FAQ
Common questions about GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwen3 VL 4B Thinking.