ChatGLM3-6B

ChatGLM3-6B is the third-generation open dialogue model jointly released by Zhipu AI and Tsinghua University's KEG lab on October 27, 2023. The 6B base model uses a bilingual Chinese-English design and was positioned as the strongest sub-10B base model of its time across reasoning, math, code, and general-knowledge benchmarks. Its signature advance was baking agent-style capabilities into the default open-model interface: native function calling, a code interpreter, and a newly designed prompt format supporting multi-turn dialogue. Zhipu also open-sourced a 32K long-context variant alongside the standard 8K model.

Limitations: ChatGLM3 is now a legacy checkpoint — Zhipu has moved through GLM-4 to the MIT-licensed GLM-5 line (and rebranded as Z.ai), so it is mainly useful where its small size and low hosting cost matter more than frontier capability. Licensing needs care: the weights are fully open for academic research, but commercial use requires registration through Zhipu's questionnaire rather than a standard OSI license, so verify current terms before shipping a product on it.