Is Z.ai Coding Plan Lite worth it in August 2026?

Updated August 20, 2026 · GLM Coding Plan · checked 2026-08-20

Yes, on the arithmetic. $18 a month buys up to $1,106 of usage, which is 61.4 times the price.

Subsidy multiple
61.4x
$18 a month against a ceiling of $1,106 at Z.ai's own API rates. 400 prompts per 7d, the cap that binds first, assuming 300k tokens each, at $2.15 per million on GLM-5.3.

What you actually get

The plan allows 80 prompts per 5 hours, 400 prompts per week and 10,000 credits per week.

One user prompt fans out to roughly 15-20 internal model calls but counts as one against quota. Third-party figures for Pro and Max conflict ($72/$80 and $160/$168).

The models behind it

ModelInOutBlended
GLM-5.3 $1.40 $4.40 $2.15

Against the other Z.ai tiers

PlanPriceCeilingMultiple
Coding Plan Lite $18 $1,106 61.4x
Coding Plan Pro $80 $6,636 83.0x
Coding Plan Max $168 $15,484 92.2x

Priced against other vendors

Z.ai Coding Plan Lite vs Moonshot AI Moderato
$18 against $19 a month
Z.ai Coding Plan Lite vs Anthropic Pro
$18 against $20 a month
Z.ai Coding Plan Lite vs MiniMax Token Plan Plus
$18 against $20 a month

Check it yourself

This page is generated from the catalogue, so it matches the plan data exactly. To measure your own usage against it, install the skill and ask your agent:

curl -o ~/.claude/skills/aisubsidy-measure/SKILL.md --create-dirs https://aisubsidy.pages.dev/skill.md