GLM-5 and MiniMax M2.5 push low-cost, agentic coding into production range
Two Chinese releases—Zhipu AI’s GLM-5 and MiniMax M2.5—signal a shift toward affordable, agentic coding models that challenge frontier systems on practical benchmarks. Zhipu AI’s GLM-5 is positioned as an MIT-licensed open model with a native Agent Mode that rivals proprietary leaders on multiple benchmarks, with a deep-dive detailing its pre-launch appearance under a pseudonym and hints from vLLM pull requests ([official overview](https://z.ai/blog/glm-5?_bhlid=d84a093754c9e11cb0d2e9ff416fd99cb5f0e2da), [leak analysis](https://medium.com/reading-sh/glm-5-chinas-745b-parameter-open-source-model-that-leaked-before-it-launched-b2cfbafe99ef?source=rss-8af100df272------2), [weights claim](https://medium.com/ai-software-engineer/glm-5-arrive-with-a-bang-from-vibe-coding-to-agentic-engineering-disrupts-opus-b2b13f02b819)). MiniMax’s M2.5 posts strong results on coding and agentic tasks—80.2% SWE-Bench Verified, 51.3% Multi-SWE-Bench, 76.3% BrowseComp—while running 37% faster than M2.1 and costing roughly $1/hour at 100 tokens/sec (or $0.30/hour at 50 tps), with speed reportedly matching Claude Opus 4.6 ([release details](https://www.minimax.io/news/minimax-m25)). For developer workflows, quick-start videos show GLM-5 (and similarly Kimi K2.5) slotting into Claude Code with minimal setup, lowering trial friction inside existing IDEs ([GLM-5 with Claude Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey-HW-nJBiw&pp=ygURQ3Vyc29yIElERSB1cGRhdGU%3D), [Kimi K2.5 with Claude Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZtLwOhmHps&pp=ygURQ3Vyc29yIElERSB1cGRhdGU%3D)).