gpt-oss-120b (High) vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: gpt-oss-120b (High) by OpenAI or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
gpt-oss-120b (High) scores 2.7 points higher (11.6 vs 8.9) but costs 1.9× as much to run the benchmark ($123 vs $63.7; both mid-range class). Pick gpt-oss-120b (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni….
| Metric | gpt-oss-120b (High) | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.6 | 8.9 | −23.3% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 23.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $122.71 | $63.74 | −48.1% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 48.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.19s | 10.10s | −9.7% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 9.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.15 / $0.60 | $0.05 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs gpt-oss-120b (High): 23.3% less intelligence, 48.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 9.7% faster end-to-end.
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.
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
gpt-oss-120b (High)NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)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-oss-120b/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-oss-120b/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill