GPT-5.5 (Medium) vs gpt-oss-20b (High)
Which is better for the money: GPT-5.5 (Medium) by OpenAI 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
GPT-5.5 (Medium) scores 24.8 points higher (33.8 vs 9.0) but costs 73× as much to run the benchmark ($2095 vs $28.8; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 9.0, and gpt-oss-20b (High) when 9.0 is enough.
| Metric | GPT-5.5 (Medium) | gpt-oss-20b (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 33.8 | 9.0 | −73.4% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 73.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,095.12 | $28.81 | −98.6% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 98.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.50s | 15.12s | +31.5% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 31.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $30.0 | $0.05 / $0.22 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
gpt-oss-20b (High) vs GPT-5.5 (Medium): 73.4% less intelligence, 98.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 31.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- GPT-5.5 (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.
GPT-5.5 (Medium)gpt-oss-20b (High)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-5-medium/gpt-oss-20b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-5-medium/gpt-oss-20b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill