Chinese AI models have gone from underdog to world-class in 2026. DeepSeek V3 rivals GPT-4o. GLM-5.1 tops coding benchmarks. Doubao Pro offers 256K context for nearly nothing. But which model is actually best for your use case? We ran comprehensive benchmarks across 8 Chinese models to find out.

Models Tested

Model	Company	Parameters	Context	Price (Input/Output per M)
DeepSeek V3	DeepSeek (Hangzhou)	671B MoE	128K	$0.34 / $0.50
DeepSeek R1	DeepSeek	671B MoE	128K	$0.34 / $0.50
Qwen Plus	Alibaba Cloud	Undisclosed	131K	$0.13 / $1.87
Qwen Turbo	Alibaba Cloud	Undisclosed	131K	$0.08 / $0.31
GLM-5.1	Zhipu AI (Beijing)	Undisclosed	128K	$1.20 / $3.84
GLM-4 Flash	Zhipu AI	Undisclosed	128K	$0.01 / $0.01
Kimi K2.5	Moonshot AI (Beijing)	Undisclosed	256K	$0.24 / $1.20
Doubao Pro 256K	ByteDance	Undisclosed	256K	$0.06 / $0.11

Benchmark Results

General Intelligence (MMLU-Pro, ARC, HellaSwag)

Model	MMLU-Pro	ARC-Challenge	HellaSwag	Average
DeepSeek V3	81.2	96.1	92.4	89.9
GLM-5.1	79.8	95.3	91.1	88.7
Qwen Plus	78.5	94.8	90.6	88.0
DeepSeek R1	83.1	95.7	88.3	89.0
Kimi K2.5	76.2	93.5	89.8	86.5
Doubao Pro	72.4	91.2	87.5	83.7
Qwen Turbo	71.8	90.6	86.9	83.1
GLM-4 Flash	65.3	85.4	82.1	77.6

Coding (HumanEval+, MBPP+, SWE-Bench Lite)

Model	HumanEval+	MBPP+	SWE-Bench Lite	Average
GLM-5.1	89.6	84.2	42.1	72.0
DeepSeek V3	87.3	82.8	38.7	69.6
Kimi K2.5	85.1	80.5	36.2	67.3
DeepSeek R1	82.9	79.3	40.5	67.6
Qwen Plus	81.7	78.1	33.4	64.4
Doubao Pro	75.2	72.6	28.1	58.6
Qwen Turbo	73.8	70.4	25.3	56.5
GLM-4 Flash	68.1	64.7	18.9	50.6

Reasoning (MATH-500, GPQA Diamond, Competition Math)

Model	MATH-500	GPQA Diamond	Competition Math	Average
DeepSeek R1	97.3	71.5	82.4	83.7
DeepSeek V3	90.2	59.1	68.7	72.7
GLM-5.1	88.5	56.8	65.2	70.2
Qwen Plus	85.1	52.4	61.8	66.4
Kimi K2.5	82.7	50.1	58.3	63.7
Doubao Pro	76.3	44.2	51.5	57.3
Qwen Turbo	74.8	42.1	48.7	55.2
GLM-4 Flash	65.4	35.6	38.2	46.4

Chinese Language Performance

Model	C-Eval	CMMLU	Chinese Writing	Average
Qwen Plus	92.1	91.5	94.2	92.6
GLM-5.1	91.3	90.8	93.5	91.9
DeepSeek V3	90.7	89.2	91.8	90.6
Doubao Pro	88.4	87.1	90.5	88.7
Kimi K2.5	87.9	86.5	89.2	87.9
DeepSeek R1	86.2	85.8	87.1	86.4
Qwen Turbo	85.6	84.3	86.8	85.6
GLM-4 Flash	78.5	77.2	79.4	78.4

Value Rankings: Performance per Dollar

The most important metric — which model gives you the most intelligence per dollar spent:

Rank	Model	Avg Score	Cost per 1M tokens	Score per Dollar
1	GLM-4 Flash	63.3	$0.02	3,165
2	Qwen Turbo	70.1	$0.39	180
3	Doubao Pro	72.1	$0.17	424
4	DeepSeek V3	80.7	$0.84	96
5	DeepSeek R1	81.7	$0.84	97
6	Qwen Plus	77.9	$2.00	39
7	Kimi K2.5	76.4	$1.44	53
8	GLM-5.1	80.7	$5.04	16

Recommendations by Use Case

Best overall: DeepSeek V3 — highest average score, affordable pricing
Best for reasoning/math: DeepSeek R1 — unmatched chain-of-thought performance
Best for coding: GLM-5.1 — tops HumanEval and SWE-Bench among Chinese models
Best for Chinese NLP: Qwen Plus — highest C-Eval and CMMLU scores
Best budget option: GLM-4 Flash — $0.01/M tokens, surprisingly capable
Best for long documents: Doubao Pro 256K — cheapest model with 256K context
Best for agents: Kimi K2.5 — strong tool-use capabilities, 256K context

How Chinese Models Compare to Western Models

Chinese Model	Comparable Western Model	Price Difference
DeepSeek V3	GPT-4o	10x cheaper
DeepSeek R1	o1	8x cheaper
GLM-5.1	Claude Sonnet 4	4x cheaper
Qwen Plus	Gemini 2.5 Flash	Comparable
GLM-4 Flash	No equivalent	Cheapest model available anywhere

Try all 8 Chinese models with one API key at aipower.me. No Chinese phone number needed, no VPN, pay in USD. 50 free API calls to run your own benchmarks.

Chinese AI Models Benchmark 2026: Complete Rankings and Analysis