GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking
GLM-4.5-Air leads the LLM Stats Score 24.4 to 16.2.
Zhipu AI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
GLM-4.5-Air leads the overall LLM Stats Score 24.4 to 16.2, ranking #164 overall.
In the 3 individual benchmarks reported for both models, GLM-4.5-Air wins 3; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose GLM-4.5-Air
- overall performance matters — it scores 24.4 and ranks #164 on LLM Stats
- your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 3 of 3 exact shared results
Choose Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2025
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Capability indexes
Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks
Individual benchmarks
14 reported for GLM-4.5-Air · 50 for Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking
GLM-4.5-Air outperforms in 3 benchmarks (BFCL-v3, GPQA, MMLU-Pro), while Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking is better at 0 benchmarks.
GLM-4.5-Air significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
GLM-4.5-Air has 97.0B more parameters than Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking, making it 1077.8% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking specifies input context (262,144 tokens). Only Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking specifies output context (262,144 tokens).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking supports multimodal inputs, whereas GLM-4.5-Air does not.
Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
GLM-4.5-Air
Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking
License
Usage and distribution terms
GLM-4.5-Air is licensed under MIT, while Qwen3 VL 8B 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 8B Thinking was released on 2025-09-22.
Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking is 2 months newer than GLM-4.5-Air.
Jul 28, 2025
1.1 years ago
Sep 22, 2025
12 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
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against GLM-4.5-Air and Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking.