GLM's overseas versions have all seen price increases of up to 140%, with the price difference between China and overseas markets exceeding 100%. This "foreigner tax" has sparked heated debate in the community.

According to ME News, on April 15th (UTC+8), according to Beating's monitoring, Zhipu raised prices across its entire overseas version of the GLM Coding Plan by 80%-140% on April 11th. The Max monthly fee increased from $80 to $160, Pro from $30 to $72, and Lite from $10 to $18 (all including a 10% invitation discount). The same Max plan is priced at 469 yuan (approximately $68) in China, meaning the overseas version is more than double the price. Combined with the 10% API price adjustment coinciding with the release of GLM-5.1, this marks Zhipu's third price increase in 2026. Overseas developer Lex posted on X, calling this "foreigner tax" outrageous. He tested it and found that the domestic version can be purchased via WeChat or Alipay, and the obtained API key is also usable overseas, with no regional lock-in; the price difference is purely a pricing strategy. The comments section is divided: opponents argue that all overseas endpoints are actually hosted in Singapore, so infrastructure costs aren't necessarily higher; supporters claim that payment, risk control, and compliance costs in overseas markets should be borne by local users, and regional pricing differences are industry practice. The confidence to continuously raise prices stems from product reputation. Victor Mustar, product manager of Hugging Face, posted on X that he wrote a 531-line Three.js racing game from scratch using GLM-5.1, including a realistic drift physics engine and four AI personalities. He achieved this without visual assistance, with the model iterating and debugging over 20 times on its own, believing its performance surpasses Claude Code with Opus 4.6, and predicting this model will be widely discussed. However, the price increase comes at a cost. OpenRouter data shows that the GLM series ranking has gradually declined from third globally when GLM-5 was released in February, falling to 15th as of April 15th. The problem with the domestic version isn't the price, but its scarcity; Max packages sell out instantly every day, and proxy-buying services have appeared on Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace). (Source: ME)