GLM or Qwen: which to choose for agents and documents
Both are Chinese, both ship in Ollama, both run on a CPU in their smaller sizes and scale to a cluster. The catalog marks Qwen as supporting Russian and GLM as not, which is the deciding factor for a Russian-language product. GLM licensing depends on the version: GLM-4.5 through GLM-5.2 and GLM-5.3-Flash are MIT, GLM-5.3 has its own license requiring a Z.ai review for very large API providers, and early ChatGLM and GLM-4-9B require registration. Qwen is mostly Apache 2.0, though the larger Qwen3.8 models also carry their own license; both lines were updated in August 2026.
Comparison based on catalog data
| Parameter | GLM (ChatGLM) | Qwen |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Text, Image + text | Text, Image + text |
| Developer | Zhipu AI (Z.ai), China | Alibaba, China |
| Releases | Mar 2023 – Aug 2026 | Aug 2023 – Aug 2026 |
| Sizes | 1.5B – 744B-A40B | 0,6B – 2,4T-A95B |
| Hardware | Laptop, 1 GPU, Cluster | Laptop, 1 GPU, Cluster |
| Commercial use | Commercial use with conditions | Commercial use with conditions |
| License | GLM-4.5 – GLM-5.2 and GLM-5.3-Flash: MIT; GLM-5.3: own license (API providers with revenue from $10 billion need a review by Z.ai); early ChatGLM and GLM-4-9B: own license with registration | Apache 2.0 (most versions); the larger Qwen3.8 models have their own license |
| Russian | Not supported | Supported |
| Ollama | Yes | Yes |
| Without GPU | Yes | Yes |
| Tasks |
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Choose GLM (ChatGLM) if
- You want MIT, which covers GLM-4.5 through GLM-5.2 and GLM-5.3-Flash
- Agentic work, developer assistance and long-document processing
- You need image understanding, which GLM-5.3-Flash provides
Choose Qwen if
- The product is Russian-language: Qwen lists Russian, GLM does not
- You need something under 1.5B: Qwen starts at 0.6B
- Support and e-commerce work: tickets, product copy, knowledge base answers
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- GigaChat or YandexGPT: which to choose for business
- Gemma or Llama: which to choose for business
- Mistral or Llama: which to choose for business
- Llama or DeepSeek: which to run inside your own perimeter
- Gemma or Phi: small models for modest hardware
- T-Pro or GigaChat: which one for a Russian company
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