gpt-oss-120b (High) vs Kimi K3 (Max)

Which is better for the money: gpt-oss-120b (High) by OpenAI or Kimi K3 (Max) by Kimi? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

OpenAIgpt-oss-120b (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 11.60
Total cost: $123

KimiKimi K3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 43.60
Total cost: $3658

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Kimi K3 (Max) scores 32.0 points higher (43.6 vs 11.6) but costs 30× as much to run the benchmark ($3658 vs $123; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Kimi K3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 11.6, and gpt-oss-120b (High) when 11.6 is enough.

Metric	gpt-oss-120b (High)	Kimi K3 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	11.6	43.6	+275.9% Kimi K3 (Max) is 3.8× more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$122.71	$3,658.07	+2881.1% Kimi K3 (Max) is 30× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	11.44s	56.00s	+389.5% Kimi K3 (Max) is 389.5% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.15 / $0.60	$3.00 / $15.0
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

Kimi K3 (Max) vs gpt-oss-120b (High): 275.9% more intelligence, 2881.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 389.5% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker gpt-oss-120b (High): what beats it Kimi K3 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

gpt-oss-120b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.
Kimi K3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.

gpt-oss-120b (High)Kimi K3 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gpt-oss-120b/kimi-k3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-oss-120b/kimi-k3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill