Comment by KronisLV
3 days ago
Their coding plan switched to credits, didn’t it? What are the rate limits like, compared to Anthropic or Kimi K3?
I remember trying their Coding Plan out before the change and the 5 hour limits felt too restrictive then even for light/medium work, especially cause of the whole peak and off-peak thing: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/z-ai-s-glm-5-2-is-a-great-model...
Nowadays, I’d probably go with their Max plan if the rate limits are okay? Anyone using them now?
Oh also unrelated but ZCode was surprisingly good, which is surprising for a tool that came out of nowhere - even some of the critiques in my blog post have been patched out. Sadly they don’t support using Claude Code as an agent so can’t use it like Paseo or Kepler or Agent Orchestrator.
> Anyone using them now?
You're gonna have a had time getting straight answer to that out of the internet. There are now 4 different flavours of the Max plan floating around (Legacy V1, Legacy V2, New plans, and the current credit ones). And on top of that they have peak times. So ~8 scenarios, 24 in total across all feedback for their coding plans.
So when someone tells you they're having a good time on a GLM coding plan it's damn near unusable as a datapoint unless both parties are very clear about what precisely is being discussed
[It's been good for me though...V1 Max off peak...which is basically the best of the 24]
I have V1 Max, and I think they throttled me for using it too much. I was maybe abusing it, by sending out 8 or 16 review agents at a time.
I haven't tried it in a few months, but it went from amazing to unusable really fast.
That could also just be random fluctuations in quality of service. Some days it's super fast, some days super slow or I get constant errors.
Wdym "sadly they don’t support using Claude Code"? For the longest time that's all Zai supported - Claude code. I'd run it via
I liked Claude Code to start with. But over time between 'CC cache thrashing undo' seetings (I see now accumulated in ~/.claude/settings.json) and Anthropic-anything becoming a liability - have not used it in while. ZCode is ok and use it to take advantage of the discount tokens on offer from time to time. But really glad to see that in omp (oh-my-pi) Zai is a 1st class provider, can be selected on it's own no configs shananigans needed. And fits in the overall picture. E.g. can select GLM-5.2 (now 5.3) assign role [plan] or glm-5-turbo [advisor].
Got reminded now of glm-5v-turbo - that 'v' was for vision - will try assign it role [vision] now in omp. See what happens. :-) Often times it's handy when describing gui problems if the harness/model 'can see'.
I am not talking about GLM models being served through an Anthropic compatible API, that part is perfectly fine and I'm glad they support it!
I am talking about ZCode, the program, being unable to delegate to other harnesses, like using Claude Code (or even OpenCode) within their UI, so that an Anthropic subscription can be used, because Anthropic don't let you use 3rd party harnesses directly.
It's basically what Paseo: https://paseo.sh/ and Kepler https://www.gitkraken.com/kepler and Zed https://zed.dev/ support doing.
ZCode doesn't seem to work at that level, it instead feels comparable to OpenCode or Codex or Claude Code directly, while also being desktop oriented - you just make API calls directly within it.
It's okay if it's not a goal of theirs, it's just that their UI is really really nice and that would be a cool direction for them to also go in some day.
Ah sorry - I misunderstood. Thanks for explaining it. Have not heard of Paseo nor Kepler, and have never tried Zed. Yeah I too assumed if I'm to try use OpenAI subscription outside Codex, or Anthropic subscription outside Claude Code - I'd get my account banned it's agains their rules. So I have never looked how using the whole harness from outside looks like either (except for 'claude -p'). Interesting. BTW I see now https://docs.z.ai/devpack/tool/codex Zai added OpenAI compatible end point.
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I used the legacy plan with only the 5 hour limits on lite. It was super awesome but sadly not comparable to the new plan.
Currently I am on the new max plan with the 5hr limits and weekly limits, I can't speak for the credit plan. Using it exclusively in zcode because of the usage multiplier + the harness is genuinely good.
Easily do a billion tokens per week on my limits and generally have no problems with limits, however if I use it during peak hours I will hit the 5hr limit super fast even in zcode.
Zcode gives much more usage: Normal hours 1x -> 0.67x usage multiplier Peak hours 3x -> 2x usage multiplier
Peak lines up with the afternoon for me and I prefer coding morning/night so its not really a problem + I have the codex $20 plan and opencode go so I can always use other subs during peak hours.
If the peak hours are your main work hours (its a 4 hour window) then the value is going to be MUCH lower, especially in CC or other harnesses (1/3rd the usage limits is harsh).
It does also change a bit depending on demand, so I recommend getting the max plan because you get priority access if you really like the model, it would be a 10/10 recommendation for me if it had vision but rn its mainly useful for backend or throw away internal tools where IDK about the UI as much.
Update: tested it out myself on their Max plan, on some parallel agentic sessions.
Currently 20% of my 5 hour limit and 4% of my weekly limit.
Extrapolating from that (inaccurate for now but oh well):
All of the work was off-peak I think, using OpenCode not ZCode in these examples.
Their own estimates are quite different, probably due to their conservative caching estimates vs what I normally get on longer form work: https://docs.z.ai/devpack/overview#estimated-token-allowance
I found with GLM I was better off using plans from either Neuralwatt or Ollama.
But Neuralwatt significantly raised their rates since then.
I feel like quota on their subs is extremely generous. I pay 3-4 times less for larger quota than gpt-5.6-sol.