V4 isn't the newest DeepSeek, and GLM 5.3 non-Flash isn't the same ballpark
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash has marginally better coding, and smaller experts (8B-In/16B-Out) with more compressed attention and KV cache, so it's faster but will have less expertise per task. It's a 552B model, so while it theoretically may contain more trained data it also requires more RAM (the experts are smaller to compensate for speed loss) making it harder to serve without the distributed KV cache DeepSeek hosts.
- GLM 5.3 Flash has marginally better agentic work, and has video input (DS doesn't), and its experts are 18B so there's more intelligence per task. It's a 320B model so it requires less RAM which will make it cheaper to serve. Considering it's a much smaller model, the higher intelligence indicates their architecture/training is better.
- GLM 5.3 (non-Flash) is far more intelligent than both; it's a 744B model with 40B experts, but it's text-only.
Model sizes aren't directly comparable, and they aren't even that relevant. I care about result quality, cost, and speed, not size. I switched to deepseek because it was giving me better coding results than GLM, and for far less cost. GLM is still better at planning.
In OpenCode, it shows up as "Deepseek V4 Flash Latest", so I assume it is the v4.1, so that's where the confusion comes from.
However, I disagree on the technical specifications. For most projects, a single prompt will get me what I want with good quality with Deepseek vs GLM 5.3. This is from real world experience with JS and Elixir. Perhaps for other tasks GLM 5.3 might be good. But, my biggest annoyance with most non-flash model providers - including GLM is they will dumb down the models based on load (like switching a non-flash model to flash model). That sucks because you expect a certain level of intelligence from them. Not a coin toss on "here's me hoping it works" and you expect a certain model only when you explicitly specify it by name.
