ChatGLM
Zhipu AI (Z.ai) · Other · Chatbot · China AI
ChatGLM is Zhipu AI's free assistant, built on the GLM model family. It handles chat, sourced web search, long document reading, image and video generation and data analysis in one window.
About ChatGLM
What Is ChatGLM
ChatGLM is the name Zhipu AI uses for both its assistant and the model family behind it. The app lives at chatglm.cn, runs in a browser, ships on iOS and Android, and shows up inside WeChat as a mini program. The engine under the hood is the GLM-5.3 family, which Zhipu releases as open weights and also sells through its API.
The product exists to fold several paid tools into one thread. Instead of a standalone AI chatbot, a search engine, a PDF reader, an image generator and a spreadsheet, you get all of them in the same conversation. Ask a question, attach the report it came from, then turn the answer into slides without leaving the page.
The trade-off is language and access. ChatGLM AI is tuned first for Chinese, so English answers read correctly but carry less of the idiomatic polish you get from Western chatbots. Signing in takes a Chinese mobile number or a WeChat account, which is why Zhipu runs the separate Z.ai site for everyone else. Free quotas also shrink at busy hours, and the heavier tools sit behind a paid membership.
Getting Started
- Open chatglm.cn in a browser, or install the app from the App Store or a Chinese Android store. The WeChat mini program works without an install.
- Sign in with a phone number or scan the WeChat code. A basic chat works right away, with no card on file.
- Type your question, or use the paperclip to attach a PDF, a Word file, a spreadsheet or a photo and ask about the contents.
- Switch on the tools you need in the input bar: web search for fresh facts, image or video generation for media, the code interpreter for numbers.
- Save the thread to a folder or turn it into a shareable link. Build a custom agent when you want the same setup to run again.
Product Information
A quick look at ChatGLM's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Students and researchers working in Chinese
- Office staff who write in Chinese all day
- Developers weighing GLM
Tasks
- Reading a contract, a paper or a manual
- Producing a poster or a short clip
- Checking today's news with citations
- Cleaning a messy spreadsheet
Scenarios
- A deadline the night before
- Picking a model for a product
- Building a small internal helper
Key features
Conversation on GLM-5.3
The chat window runs the current GLM model, with a 1M token context on the Flash tier and a longer working memory than the previous generation. That matters for agent style work: you can keep a long thread going, paste several files, and still get an answer that remembers the earlier constraints. A thinking mode sits next to the send button for problems that need reasoning before output.
AI Search With Sources
Turning on search lets ChatGLM AI pull live pages instead of relying on training data. Answers come back with numbered links, so a claim about a price, a release date or a match result can be checked in a click. It is the feature that makes the assistant usable for daily research rather than only for drafting.
Long Document Analysis
You can drop in a PDF, a Word file, an Excel sheet, a deck or a photo and ask questions about it. The reader keeps the structure, so a question about page 40 points back to page 40, and a scanned table gets read as a table. For contracts and papers, that citation trail saves more time than the summary itself.
Image and Video Generation in the Chat
The CogView image generator turns a prompt into a poster, an illustration or a product mockup without leaving the conversation. The CogVideoX video generator does the same for short clips, and paid users get higher resolution and more runs per day. Neither replaces a design suite, but both are fast enough for a draft you can react to.
Code Interpreter and Data Analysis
A sandboxed Python session handles the math that chat models usually fake. Upload a CSV, ask for a monthly breakdown, and you get a real chart plus the code that produced it. Analysts use it to sanity check numbers before they go into a deck, and students use it to walk through a statistics problem step by step.
Custom Agents and Cloud Knowledge Base
You can build an agent with its own instructions, files and tool access, then reuse it from a sidebar. A cloud knowledge base lets you load private documents so answers lean on your material first. Memory carries preferences between sessions, which cuts the setup time on recurring work.
Pros and cons
Pros
- The free tier is a working product, not a demo: chat, search, file uploads and image generation all run without a card.
- One window covers what normally takes four subscriptions, from cited search to slides to a chart drawn from your own CSV.
- Chinese output is the strongest part, with terminology and tone that beat translated answers from Western chatbots.
- Open weights and a paid API mean a team can prototype in the app and ship the same model later.
- Document answers link back to the source page, which makes fact checking quick.
Cons
- English writing feels slightly stiff: grammar is clean, but idioms and rhythm give away that Chinese came first.
- The free tier throttles at peak hours, so a deadline at 10am can mean waiting or paying.
- Signing in needs a Chinese number or WeChat, which shuts out plenty of international users who then have to use Z.ai instead.
- The interface is crowded: search, agents, slides and video sit in one toolbar, and new users miss half of them.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. The chat, web search, file upload and basic image generation work on a free account with daily limits. Paid membership raises those limits and unlocks higher resolution video and heavier agent use.
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