After hitting Claude limits today I spent the afternoon using OpenCode + GLM 5.1 via OpenRouter and I was very impressed.

OpenCode picked up my CLAUDE.md files and skills straight away, and I got similar performance to Opus 4.6.

How much did it cost for how long?

~$1/hr over 4 hours.

I'm pretty conservative when it comes to clearing the context, and I also tend to provide the right files to work on (or at least the right starting point).

I had seen prior to using the model that it starts producing much worse results when the context used is larger, so my usage style probably helps getting better results. I work like this with Claude Code anyway, so it wasn't a big change.

https://z.ai/subscribe

Many of us got the annual Lite plan when they had the $28 discount. But even at $120 I think it's a good deal.

I am trying to take this in the more giving way possible, anyone remotely considering that subscription should go on reddit and see all the people experiencing outages constantly and insanely slow speeds when it does work.

I have been wanting to subscribe but based on how awful the experience is for most people, I just can’t pull the trigger

At $84, I can understand not taking the risk. But for $28 ... it was worth it.

FWIW, I've never dealt with outages since I signed up over 3 months ago (Lite plan). It is slow - always has been. I can live with that.

At the same time, I'm not using it for work. It's for the occasional project once in a while. So maybe I just haven't hit any limits? I did use it for OpenClaw for 2-3 weeks. Never had connection issues.

Looking at https://docs.z.ai/devpack/faq

you can see the details of their limits. Seems GLM 5.1 has low thresholds, and will get lower starting May. On Reddit I see some people switching to GLM 5 and claiming they haven't hit limits - the site doesn't indicate the limits for that model.

They also say that those who subscribed before February have different limits - unsure if it's lower or higher!

GLM-4.7 is still a fairly capable model. Not as good as Opus, but for most personal projects it's been adequate. I see on Reddit plenty of people plan using GLM-5.1, and use 4.7 for implementation.

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