GLM & Z.ai: The Complete Guide

Six chapters, one fast-moving model family from a different vendor. The map before you pick a chapter, and the order that actually makes sense.

Three releases in four months, one very deliberate context-window jump: what changed at each step, and why it matters before you adopt anything downstream.

Three tiers built on one shared credit system, what each actually buys, and how to size the right one before you commit.

Pointing an existing Claude Code setup at the GLM Coding Plan takes no new tool to learn, only redirected traffic, so here's exactly what changes and what quietly stays put.

Z.ai ships its own desktop agent built around GLM, and a long list of tools a team may already use can connect to the same models too, here's how to tell which path actually fits.

Three models are competing for the same coding work today, and knowing where each one actually pulls ahead beats trusting whichever leaderboard screenshot crossed your feed last.

Running GLM at a company raises two separate questions, where the model runs and what happens to the data, and both deserve a real answer before either becomes the default.