Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) vs gpt-oss-20b (High)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) by Google or gpt-oss-20b (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) scores 30.8 points higher (39.8 vs 9.0) but costs 38× as much to run the benchmark ($1100 vs $28.8; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) when you need intelligence above 9.0, and gpt-oss-20b (High) when 9.0 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) | gpt-oss-20b (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.8 | 9.0 | −77.4% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 77.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,100.06 | $28.81 | −97.4% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 97.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | Not reported | 16.48s | — not comparable |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $3.75 | $0.05 / $0.22 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text |
gpt-oss-20b (High) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium): 77.4% less intelligence, 97.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- gpt-oss-20b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)gpt-oss-20b (High)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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