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DeepSeek vs Qwen vs GLM vs Kimi (2026): The Complete Chinese LLM API Comparison

Four labs dominate the Chinese frontier model market. This is the side-by-side you need: real pricing (official vs Bridge), context windows, strengths — and a decision guide for your workload.

The comparison at a glance

Model	Context	Official input / output (≈$)	Bridge input / output	Bridge cache-hit	Best for
DeepSeek V4 Pro	128K	$1.27 / $3.80 (peak)	$0.25 / $0.65	$0.025	Reasoning, coding, general chat
GLM-5.2	200K	$1.13 / $3.94	$0.40 / $1.20	$0.04	Chinese-language, vision
Kimi K3	256K	$2.82 / $14.08	$1.50 / $3.50	$0.15	Long documents, agents
Qwen2.5 72B	128K	n/a (open weights)	$0.25 / $0.75	—	High-volume pipelines, lowest latency

Official USD figures converted from CNY at ≈¥7.1/USD, per media reports and Tencent Cloud billing docs (August 2026); DeepSeek shows peak-hour rates after the August 2026 peak/off-peak change. Bridge prices are from the live price table on the models page.

DeepSeek V4 Pro: the reasoning workhorse

Wins: best price-to-performance for reasoning and coding after Bridge's flat pricing — no peak-hour surcharge to schedule around. Cache hits at $0.025/1M make long agent sessions cheap. Read the full breakdown in our DeepSeek pricing analysis.

GLM-5.2: Chinese language + vision

Wins: the strongest Chinese-language understanding of the four, plus native vision input through an OpenAI-compatible image_url format. The default pick for customer support, moderation and localization. See the GLM API guide.

Kimi K3: the long-context specialist

Wins: 256K context — the largest of the group — for whole-repo code review, contract analysis and agentic loops. Official output pricing is steep; Bridge's $3.50/1M changes the economics. See the Kimi API guide.

Qwen2.5 72B: open-weights economics

Wins: no closed-lab royalty means durable low pricing, and self-hosting puts it closest to users — the lowest p50 latency on Bridge. The right tier for classification, extraction and translation at scale. See the Qwen API guide.

How to choose (decision guide)

Default general model → DeepSeek V4 Pro.
Chinese-language or images → GLM-5.2.
Documents bigger than 128K → Kimi K3.
High-volume simple tasks → Qwen2.5 72B.

All four live behind one key and one bill. Swap models by changing a single string:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="https://bridge.computeindex.net/v1", api_key="sk-bridge-YOUR_KEY")

for model in ["deepseek-v4-pro", "glm-5.2", "kimi-k3", "qwen2.5-72b-instruct"]:
    r = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "One-sentence summary of your value."}],
    )
    print(model, "→", r.choices[0].message.content)

Cost sanity check

Estimate your monthly bill across models with the LLM API cost calculator — it uses the same price table as production billing.

FAQ

Which Chinese model is best overall? For most workloads in August 2026: DeepSeek V4 Pro on Bridge — frontier reasoning at open-model prices, flat all day. Choose the others for their specialties (vision, 256K context, open-weights volume).

Are these models really OpenAI-compatible? Through Bridge, yes — byte-level compatible: base_url, api_key, and you're done. Streaming and tool calling included.

Do I need a Chinese phone number to use them? Not with Bridge — email registration and USD billing only.

Get $1 free credit → compare all four models