Qwen, GLM or DeepSeek: which model to pick for the job

Cheat sheet

How to test on your task

Take 5–10 real examples: real code, a real contract, a real customer message. Send them to two or three models with the same prompt and compare side by side. It tells you more than any leaderboard.

At Tenzo Cloud you switch models in the chat composer or with one model line in the API, so the comparison takes minutes.

When to keep several models

If you run both a coding agent and a support bot, take GLM 5.3 for the agent and a fast model for the bot. Subscriptions to different models are independent, and streams for one model stack.

Common mistakes when choosing

Mistake one: picking by leaderboards. Benchmarks measure average ability on standard tasks, while yours is almost always non-standard: your code style, your terminology, your documents.

Mistake two: using the largest model for everything. For ticket classification or short bot replies a fast model gives the same quality and answers several times faster.

Mistake three: comparing on one example. Models are not deterministic; the same question may get different answers. Use at least 5–10 examples.

A simple comparison protocol

1. Collect 10 real tasks with an expected result
2. Send them to two models with the same instruction
3. Grade answers blind, hide which model is which
4. Count where answers were more useful and where the model was wrong
5. Repeat in a month, models get updated