Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs GLM-5.3-Flash

GLM-5.3-Flash scores 65.1 (B) on agent readiness against DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731's 62.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 leads on reach and agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 B

Best for Agents or teams with a multi-GPU server, or a provider account, who want DeepSeek's V4 agent model under MIT with a 1M context

Ahead on

  • Reach, 70 against 60
  • Agent interface, 75 against 70

Watch for

The smallest 4-bit build is 156.4 GB, so it needs about 188 GB and doesn't fit a 128 GB machine

GLM-5.3-Flash B

Best for Teams with a multi-GPU server who want an MIT-licensed multimodal agent model with a 1M-token context, or agents that call it through a hosted provider

Ahead on

  • Capability, 75 against 66
  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 58 against 43

Watch for

Z.ai's smallest build is 328.4 GB in FP8, and no Ollama or LM Studio local build exists

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731GLM-5.3-FlashEdge
Capability35%356675GLM-5.3-Flash +9
Reach25%257060DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 +10
Risk20%205055GLM-5.3-Flash +5
Agent interface10%107570DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 +5
Documentation and upkeep10%104358GLM-5.3-Flash +15
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 62.4/100B 65.1/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731GLM-5.3-Flash
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorDeepSeekZ.ai
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-312026-08-26
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

A long-context agent cousin under MIT with documented tool calls, three reasoning effort levels and support in every major runtime but Ollama. It needs about 190 to 200 GB of memory, though six inference providers serve it. The main risks are prompts built from DeepSeek's Python, no published safety results and no answers in its repository.

GLM-5.3-Flash

An MIT-licensed multimodal agent and coding model with a 1M-token context and several tool calls per turn, served by vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Transformers. Z.ai's smallest build is 328 GB in FP8, so it needs a multi-GPU server. The main risk is that nothing on safety or prompt injection is published and there is no way to report a flaw.

Before you call either

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

  1. vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 --trust-remote-code --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --block-size 256 --data-parallel-size 4 --enable-expert-parallel --moe-backend deep_gemm_mega_moe --attention-config '{"use_fp4_indexer_cache": true}' --speculative-config '{"method":"dspark","num_speculative_tokens":7,"draft_sample_method":"greedy"}' --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4 --tool-call-parser deepseek_v4 --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser deepseek_v4 (the card's 4x GB300 example plus the parser flags from vLLM's recipe)
  2. Build prompts with encoding_dsv4.py, deepseek-recipe's V4 encoder or vLLM's --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4, since the repository has no Jinja template
  3. Tool calls come back in a DSML tool_calls block with invoke elements, string parameters carry string="true" and JSON values string="false"
  4. Set temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for agent work, and allow up to 384K output tokens at reasoning effort high or max
  5. Without the hardware, call it through a Hugging Face inference provider (Together, DeepInfra, Novita, Baseten, Scaleway, Featherless), not DeepSeek's API, where deepseek-v4-flash now means V4.1 Flash
  6. LM Studio's library build is a 156.4 GB MXFP4 GGUF and LM Studio states 156 GB minimum system memory

GLM-5.3-Flash

  1. Start it with vllm serve zai-org/GLM-5.3-Flash --tensor-parallel-size 4 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser glm47 --reasoning-parser glm47 (vLLM 0.32.0 or later, about 386 GB of GPU memory per vLLM's recipe)
  2. Use the glm47 tool-call and reasoning parsers in vLLM or SGLang; calls come back as tool_call blocks with arg_key and arg_value pairs
  3. Pass chat_template_kwargs: {"reasoning_effort": "low"} for short tasks; anything other than low or high falls back to max
  4. Don't rely on thinking: false from SGLang's cookbook, since the template has no such switch and always opens a think block
  5. Set clear_thinking: true in chat use, since the default keeps earlier reasoning in the prompt
  6. On a 128 GB machine only third-party low-bit builds come near fitting, none of them from Z.ai

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or GLM-5.3-Flash?

GLM-5.3-Flash scores 65.1 (B) on agent readiness against DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731's 62.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 leads on reach and agent interface.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or GLM-5.3-Flash

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