Testing the World's Most Powerful Open‑Source LLM: GLM‑5, Local Deployment & Free Ollama Cloud

Overview

The author introduces GLM‑5 as the "world's most powerful open‑source large model" and outlines three topics: a brief introduction, an 80%‑compressed local deployment, and one‑click configuration of the free Ollama cloud model for Claude Code and OpenCode.

Performance Comparison

Using classic test questions, GLM‑5 falls short of Claude Sonnet 3.7 and the closed‑source Qwen3‑Max‑Thinking, but the author notes that the Ollama‑quantized cloud version performs steadily despite minor line‑break issues.

Official benchmark results place GLM‑5 alongside Claude Opus 4.5, Gemini 3 Pro and GPT‑5.2. Artificial Analysis’s evaluation scores show GLM‑5 as the leading open‑source model, with numbers approaching Claude Opus 4.5.

The model’s strength is attributed to two factors: (1) a new architecture that integrates DeepSeek Sparse Attention, totaling 744 B parameters with a 40 B activation size for efficient long‑context service; (2) distilled data from Claude. Some users dispute the second point, suggesting much of the training data may come from Claude.

Readers are invited to try the model at https://chat.z.ai/.

Key Features

1. Agent Mode

Shifts perspective from simple dialogue to a delivery‑first mode that automatically decomposes tasks, coordinates tools, and executes workflows to produce ready‑to‑use results.

New capability for data insight and intelligent writing: transforms raw data into instant visualizations and drafts from outline to final document.

Enhanced instruction understanding and multi‑step task execution for AI presentations, full‑stack development, and advanced search.

2. Data Analysis

Upload data and instantly receive charts and conclusions.

One‑click chart generation (bar, line, pie, etc.) that automatically matches the data, eliminating manual Excel work.

End‑to‑end workflow from data cleaning, anomaly detection, trend analysis to final insight, all via conversation.

Export results as XLSX, CSV or PNG for immediate use.

3. PDF/Word/Excel Generation

GLM‑5 can convert text or source material directly into .docx, .pdf, and .xlsx files, producing product requirement documents, lesson plans, exam papers, spreadsheets, financial reports, menus, and more in an end‑to‑end fashion.

Quantized Local Deployment (FP8)

vLLM remains effective with Day 0 support. However, 99.9 % of users can ignore FP8 because it requires at least eight H200 GPUs. BF16 model files reach 1.5 TB, which 16‑card Alibaba PPU cannot handle.

Quantization leader Unsloth is releasing an 80 %+ compressed version: a 2‑bit model reduced to 280 GB. Deployment instructions are provided at https://unsloth.ai/docs/models/glm-5.

Ollama Free Cloud Model

Run the cloud version with a single command: ollama run glm-5:cloud One‑click configuration for Claude Code is also available: ollama launch claude --model glm-5:cloud Recent Ollama updates add image generation, Claude Code compatibility, and one‑click Agent launch. Additional resources link to tutorials for OpenClaw and other integrations.

The author concludes that GLM‑5 is a worthwhile domestic LLM to try and plans to replace K2.5 with it in OpenCode for deeper evaluation.