The frontier is a tax
TL;DR - The most powerful AI models from Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (GPT-5.5) are no longer clearly ahead. An open-weight challenger, Z.AI’s GLM 5.2, now matches the priciest flagships, beats Anthropic’s mainstream workhorse outright, and costs a fraction as much. At the same time the closed labs are quietly ending the all-you-can-eat deal on their heaviest models and moving to pay-per-use as they chase profit. If you pay for the top tier out of habit, now is the moment to check whether you still need to.
A quick orientation for anyone who does not live in this stuff. “Frontier” models are the biggest, most capable AI systems, the ones the headlines are about. Anthropic’s Claude Opus. OpenAI’s GPT-5.5. They are closed: you rent access, you cannot see inside them, and you cannot run them yourself.
“Open-weight” models are the opposite. The company releases the actual model so anyone can download it, run it on their own hardware or host it cheaply through a dozen competing providers. Z.AI’s GLM 5.2 is one of these.