Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GLM 5.3
Claude Sonnet 5.5 took 3 min 49 s and $0.34 at list price, GLM 5.3 took 22 min 22 s and $0.34 at list price. GLM 5.3 took 5.9× as long, and both cost about the same.
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic · $10.00/M out · 9 HN pts
GLM 5.3
Z.ai · $1.40/M out · 3,306 HN pts
Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 has CLI runs here (Claude Code).
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is three people in a workshop in Rotterdam, trying to keep old synthesizers alive. We repair, restore and recalibrate the instruments that shaped electronic music: Moogs and Oberheims, Rolands and Sequential Circuits, the odd temperamental Soviet oddity that someone found in an attic.
Most of what lands on our benches has been silent for years. A crackling pot, a drifting oscillator, a power supply that gave up in 1994. Some come from working musicians who need their instrument back before the next tour. Others come from people who inherited a dusty box from a parent and want to hear what it sounds like.
We work slowly and by hand. We trace faults with a scope and a schematic, source or rebuild parts when originals are gone, and change as little as we can. Every synth leaves with a note describing exactly what we did, so the next person to open it knows where we have been.
Come by, bring your synth, and stay for coffee.
Patchbay is a three-person workshop in Rotterdam where vintage synthesizers come back to life. Whatever lands on our bench — a battered Minimoog, a Juno with dead keys, an ARP silent since the eighties — gets the same treatment: careful diagnosis, honest advice, and repairs done right.
We started Patchbay because we believe a good synthesizer shouldn't die of old age. These machines are more than circuits and sliders — they're the sound of records you grew up with, and the reason some of us got into music in the first place. Every one we fix goes back out into the world ready to make more.
Between us we handle everything from recapping and calibration to keybed work and the hunt for parts nobody has made in decades. It's slow, meticulous work, and we like it that way. If something in your collection hums, crackles, or refuses to turn on, bring it in — we'll see what we can do.
Specs and numbers
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GLM 5.3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Z.ai |
| Made in | US | China |
| Released | 28 Sep 2026 | 18 Aug 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $2.00 | $0.07 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $10.00 | $1.40 |
| Context | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | 9 | 3,306 |
| Time for the six prompts | 3 min 49 s | 22 min 22 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.34 | $0.34 |
Both cost about the same at list price: $0.34 and $0.34. Claude Sonnet 5.5 was faster: 18 min 33 s less in total, and faster on 5 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Claude Sonnet 5.5's Breakout game plays; GLM 5.3's stopped painting. GLM 5.3's Breakout game showed a blank first frame when the still was taken.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Claude Sonnet 5.5's rebuild matched the screenshot at 94%; GLM 5.3 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Claude Sonnet 5.5's game passed 5 of 5 checks, GLM 5.3's 1 of 5.





