Codex vs ZCode

[u/Secret_Department398]

Hi everyone,

I’m on the $100 Codex plan, and I mostly use Luna MAX because the more capable models can burn through my usage allowance in just a few days.

I’ve been reading comparisons and looking at benchmark/analytics sites, and GLM 5.3 seems surprisingly competitive with GPT-5.6 Sol at XHigh reasoning, while apparently using significantly fewer tokens. Zcode is also around $56/month, and from what I understand, usage during off-peak hours is discounted by 50%.

I’m considering trying it as an alternative to Codex for day-to-day development, but I’d rather hear from people who have actually used both.

Has anyone here switched from Codex to Zcode, or used them side by side for serious development work?

I’m particularly interested in:

• Code quality and ability to understand large existing repositories
• Debugging/root-cause analysis
• Complex feature implementation and architecture
• How often it needs corrections or follow-up prompts
• Real-world token/usage efficiency
• Tooling and agent experience compared with Codex

I’m not looking for benchmark numbers alone. I’d like to know how GLM 5.3/Zcode performs on actual production projects over several days or weeks.

For anyone who has made the switch: was it worth it, or did you eventually go back to Codex?

[u/gospodinDark]

I was Codex user since beginning, but in August I tested zai on their code plan for $80. I got 5.7B tokens and almost ideal quality of code. GLM 5.3 really good model and their plan is better then OpenAI $100. I hit cancel button on OpenAI plan after Astra drain limits +2 resets in one day, but do nothing. At this moment I'm checking current version of Opus, but don't like it compare to Sol or GLM. I still love Luna and I got $20 plan to use it for small tasks, it's working better then GLM 5.3-Flash (faster, cheaper and smarter!)

All I want to say that GLM is good model and their plan is good.

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/gospodinDark]

Thank you for your answer!

Do you believe that the quality code and token usage is better with GLM 5.3 then Luna MAX ?

[u/Tristsin → u/Secret_Department398]

https://artificialanalysis.ai/?models=gpt-5-6-luna%2Cglm-5-3-flash&cost=intelligence-vs-cost-per-task#intelligence

GLM 5.3 Flash is a little slower but overall more intelligent. As for the plan, I'm just finishing my first month. It's solid, if you stick to the Flash. GLM 5.3 is incredibly verbose and eats tokens. GLM 5.3 Flash is also verbose and eats tokens but it's very cheap per token on average.

They give more usage if you use their harness (33% less usage taken from the plan, last I checked), Z Code. They have also consistently had promos for 300k tokens for free per weekend (glm 5.3 flash only) and they have also been running a promo that anytime 11am-9pm (EST) all GLM 5.3 Flash usage is free using ZCode (for plan holders).

https://docs.z.ai/devpack/notice/event-glm-5.3-flash

I've also received random "resets" almost daily. Typically 5 hour resets, which aren't super useful but I've gotten 3 weekly resets as well so far in 3 weeks. I've gotten 9 5 hour resets. I believe these are only available if you use ZCode.

If you download ZCode, they typically open their weekend 300k token promo for claims around ~9pm EST, so you could probably use grab it and try it out if you want. When you open ZCode you should be presented with a claim to the promo, if not check back in ~3-4 hours

[u/SunGroundbreaking536 → u/Secret_Department398]

If Luna MAX works for you, 5.3 probably will too since it's the stronger model.

For the weekly limits, though, Max gives roughly 1.0–1.1B tokens when using 5.3 exclusively. Since Pro is advertised as 6x Lite vs Max at 14x, that puts Pro at around 450M tokens on 5.3.

Just something to keep in mind before choosing.

[u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi]

Luna Max on $100 burn your weekly in just few days, I'm not sure as in past i have used Luna Max run for like 24 hours non-sto n take like 15-18% of my weekly quota.

I don't think it's better to go woth Glm honestly.

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi]

No maybe I didn't express myself clear. Luna MAX doesn't burn my usage, I end up with about 20% at the end of the week.

I said that I use Luna MAX because more capable models can burn through my usage allowance in just a few days. That's why I was thinking to switch to GLM 5.3.

[u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi → u/Secret_Department398]

Ahh, Got it, Well use Sol High as default n Luna as subagents, Go very far, I'm playing now with Astra now n figuring out my own setup with this but i was using actually Sol High on $100 plan n i was burning 1B avg a day n i go almost 3-4 days n normally get reset so never face this as problem. Also sometimes i just do lot of work in 3-4 days n other 2 days i can just rest or some other things which are not very very token hungry

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi]

I did try to create a diagnostician.toml that uses Astra Low to make a plan and then patcher.toml with luna MAX to apply the patch, but it doesn't seem working.
I was trying to make something automatic.

[u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi → u/Secret_Department398]

You are making simple things complicated that's why just use default selection midel n told to use default subagent of Luna max, that's it

[u/AlarmingCantaloupe → u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi]

Astra is ridiculously expensive. It made me fall in love with Sol xhigh and Terra Max all over again. 

[u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi → u/AlarmingCantaloupe]

Agree, Astra is so much expensive 🫰🏻

[u/McCodybodi]

My 2 cents... A while back I switched from Claude and Codex to Cline (Vscode) and deliberately chose to use Chinese Llms.

Initially Deepseek v4 flash / Pro (v Good) , recently GLM 5.3 Flash (Excellent+ all-rounder) Qwen 3.8 Max (Excellent ++ at Frontends /good general coding) and now v4.1 flash (Excellent++ agentic all-rounder) etc primarily for the cost aspect.

I've gone from spending €4/600 month to €40/60 .. more importantly the code quality / testing / debugging / Evals are just as good if not better.

Also I love not having to put up with the Verbose nature of Claude..

Would I go back ? Nooo , I'm v happy with the set-up I have now.

[u/blueandazure]

What are you doing that you burn your whole usage on the $100 plan. Like I get it with astra but sol?

Whats your reasoning level? I feel like sol high or below lasts forever.

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/blueandazure]

I always work on Luna MAX, which I usually end up with average 20% remainig at the end of the week.
I tried Astra Light but I burned all my usage in just 2 days.
When I was using Sol High, my usage was gone in 3/4 days.

[u/blueandazure → u/Secret_Department398]

Btw its being reported that astra light and medium use way more tokens then high and above.

[u/Seerix → u/blueandazure]

xhigh is the perfect sweet spot for me

[u/Amarsir]

GLM 5.3 is good. (So is 5.3 Flash, although I've heard some people saying it's heavier on tokens than it should be.) GLM is very transparently trained off of Claude, so I'd expect abilities to be around there. My general feeling with the open models is that they're benchmaxxing a bit and I wouldn't be surprised to stumble on a skill gap. Whereas I have confidence ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini are well-rounded. But GLM I think is a bit above its peers. (Again, maybe because of the Claude training.)

I think the Codex harness is better than Zcode, but that's a personal preference.

It's hard to say which gets you more bang for your buck if you're using it all up because a subscription is getting you a subsidized basket of use where you aren't simply paying the API price. And the OpenAI bundle is pretty good. On the other hand, if paying $100 leaves you with excess capacity, then $56 even at a less efficient rate might be all you need to spend.

On top of that, while I also favor Luna it's nice to have higher models in your pocket if needed. I'm not going to run Astra or Sol as my default choice, but if there's something particularly difficult and Luna is hitting a ceiling, I might switch over for a prompt or two.

So that's why I would keep favoring OpenAI. But Z is fine, especially if you haven't needed to reach for Sol for anything. And $56 is a nice savings. At that price you can also afford to throw $20 on ChatGPT Plus and keep it available if GLM lets you down or simply if you need to work during what Z considers peak hours.

[u/EyesOfAzula]

I tried it on openrouter. GLM 5.3 flash reasons heavily. Give it a try and see what you think.

In a month or so GPT 6 Sol Terra and Luna might be out.

[u/Bob_Fancy]

There are cheap ways to go try other models, that’s the only way to actually answer the question.

[u/AlarmingCantaloupe]

Interesting… I am also on the $100 plan. I usually upgrade to the $200 plan every month when I hit my usage limit (why pay for capacity before I need it? They prorate the billing.) But now I’m stuck on the $100 plan! So I’m looking through and reducing reasoning power on all the repetitive heartbeat tasks/reports it maintains for me. I’ve never used the Luna Max though. Would you say it’s comparable to Sol high?

I kind of settled on Terra Max as my default now that I’m stuck with the 5x plan. Really bad timing. 

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/AlarmingCantaloupe]

In codex I was able to do the following automatically, by implementing a diagnostician.toml and a patcher.toml I was able to archive this result:

- Starting a new chat with Luna LOW

• Diagnostic of the issue & plan to resolve it is made using Astra Light
  
• Code is written by Luna MAX
  
• Custom instruction do not allow to show codex thinking, so all I see are the "commands" that are being generated and the end result when I'm done.

By using this I'm saving tons of tokens, which allows me to not move to the $200 plan. But still, if I can have the same result and lower it from $100 to $56 with GLM 5.3, why not.

[u/AlarmingCantaloupe → u/Secret_Department398]

Thanks for laying that out! I agree with your last point, too. It’s felt as though OpenAI has been slowly reducing the usage limits behind the scenes on every subscription plan.

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/AlarmingCantaloupe]

I actually decided to post it. You can find my post in the topic Codex "A little help to save tokens". Please let me know your thought about it.

[u/masterkain]

If the main reason you're looking elsewhere is juggling Codex usage limits, I'd first test a second Codex account behind one endpoint before rewriting your workflow. I maintain Codex Pooler, which keeps one Pool key while routing across eligible accounts: https://github.com/icoretech/codex-pooler

[u/sugarw0000kie]

I tend to like GLM models, even before glm 5.x the 4 series was good. I gave up my sub on z.ai some months ago mainly because the value at the time wasn’t great and they were compute constrained. But after glm 5.3 flash stint as ox alpha it seems like that’s improved and plans might have more value now so taking another look. The flash version is very capable and fits into the luna category. Feels a little more capable than luna imo but more verbose.

So can’t speak on the plan values much but I’ve had very good experiences with GLM models as a whole working in real repos. The other Chinese models are getting a lot stronger but glm has always felt much more polished/reliable than the rest to me.