We already know that competition brought GLM 5.2 prices down roughly 45% since its release on June 16th (1.5 months ago), and the price downward slope is probably still going (I've been checking regularly and new providers keep fighting on price, I don't think prices have settled yet). For reference : https://openrouter.ai/z-ai/glm-5.2#providers
I saw arguments like "Providers cannot price less than their costs" in other comments. In economics, it's generally admitted that they shouldn't price less than their marginal costs, i.e. in their case roughly the cost of electricity, since a lot of these datacenters are not at capacity in terms of graphics cards usage (speculation since it's very easy to rent a GC for a couple hours on some providers). My guess is that someone will be selling tokens at less than electricity + depreciation of GCs soon, since there's a lot of competition and "smaller" data centers have overcapacity? This is speculation, correct me if I'm wrong
Press x to doubt on the 45% number. The cheaper providers on open router are fp4 vs fp8 for official zai. There are some cheap fp8 ones (like novita) but the ui makes it seem like it's a temporary promotion, with their normal prices being almost equal to official zai (idk much about open router so not really sure what's going on with these discounts)
[dead]
> My guess is that someone will be selling tokens at less than electricity + depreciation of GCs soon, since there's a lot of competition and "smaller" data centers have overcapacity? This is speculation, correct me if I'm wrong
My guess is they are selling you the tokens, then selling your tokens (data) onto someone else.