Ternary Bonsai 2.9 B vs GLM 5.3: cost comparison
Prices updated 2026-10-30 · computed from live provider data
Short answer: Ternary Bonsai 2.9 B is cheaper on a
3:1 input/output blend — $0.092 per million tokens versus
$0.960, a 90% difference.
GLM 5.3 offers the larger context window at 1,048,576 tokens, against 262,144 for Ternary Bonsai 2.9 B.
Head to head
| Ternary Bonsai 2.9 B | GLM 5.3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input, per 1M tokens | $0.080 | $0.080 |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $0.130 | $3.60 |
| Blended 3:1, per 1M | $0.092 | $0.960 |
| Context window | 262,144 | 1,048,576 |
| Vendor | prism-ml | z-ai |
Monthly cost at real volumes
| Workload (input / output) | Ternary Bonsai 2.9 B | GLM 5.3 |
|---|---|---|
| 1M in / 250K out | $0.113 | $0.980 |
| 10M in / 2.5M out | $1.12 | $9.80 |
| 100M in / 25M out | $11.25 | $98.00 |
Which should you pick?
Pick GLM 5.3 when you need the longer context window (1,048,576 vs 262,144 tokens). Pick Ternary Bonsai 2.9 B when price per token dominates your workload — high-volume classification, extraction, or batch summarisation.