Side-by-side comparison of GLM-5.1 (Zhipu AI (Z.ai) · China) and Phi-4 (Microsoft · USA) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. GLM-5.1 is rated conditional; Phi-4 is EU-ready. They part ways on commercial use: GLM-5.1 is "Unrestricted", Phi-4 is "Yes".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | Conditional Per current documentation, GLM-5.1 is released under a verbatim MIT License with no use restrictions, enabling self-hosted commercial deployment. However, training-data opacity, Beijing-based publisher, and Zhipu AI's presence on the US BIS Entity List create EU AI Act transparency and supply-chain screening risks for regulated deployers. | EU-ready MIT-licensed 14B from Microsoft Research. Heavy use of synthetic training data is disclosed; English-primary (thin multilingual coverage). Strongest small-model option for permissive-licence EU deployments. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-04-17 | 2026-04-15 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Commercial use | Unrestricted | Yes |
| Training data | Undisclosed | Partial |
| Origin | China (Beijing) | USA |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | 44/100 | 10/100 |
| Speed | 48 tok/s | 29 tok/s |
| Blended price | $2.15/M | $0.22/M |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||
No overlapping sources between the two entries.