zAI and Cline deliver frontier-level AI coding for just $3
Blog post from Cline
zAI's new GLM Coding Plans present an affordable alternative for developers seeking coding assistance, offering significant savings compared to the $200/month Claude Max subscription. The plans include GLM Coding Lite at $3/month for 120 prompts per 5-hour cycle and GLM Coding Pro at $15/month for 600 prompts, both utilizing the GLM-4.5 model renowned for its high tool-calling success rate. This model, which performs well in coding tasks, ranks third overall among AI models and achieves 64.2% accuracy on coding benchmarks. The setup involves a simple process of copying an API key from zAI and pasting it into Cline, providing access to GLM-4.5 without complex authentication flows. The promotional pricing for the first month makes these plans even more economical, with GLM Coding Lite and Pro initially priced at $3 and $15, respectively, before increasing to $6 and $30. For teams, switching from Claude Max to GLM Coding Plans could result in substantial financial savings, enhancing cost-efficiency without compromising on performance.