GLM vs DeepSeek V4 for local use: the heavyweight open-model showdown

The short answer

DeepSeek-V4-Flash (284B total / 13B active, 1M context) is more memory-efficient than GLM-5 (744B / 40B active, 200K context): V4 Flash's 3-bit GGUF is ~103GB (runs on a ~110GB-RAM machine) versus…

DeepSeek-V4-Flash: 284B / 13B active, 1M context — 3-bit ~103GB, 8-bit ~162GB.

GLM-5: 744B / 40B active — 2-bit ~241GB; GLM-4.6: 355B, 2-bit ~135GB (closer to V4 Flash).

V4 Flash is the more memory-efficient heavyweight; GLM-4.5-Air (106B) is the lightest overall.

Both need big memory or the cloud — neither is a single-consumer-card model.

Both top open-weight quality rankings (Artificial Analysis, Sep 2026).