Compare / Qwen3.5-4B vs gpt-oss-20b
Qwen3.5-4B vs gpt-oss-20b
Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 15 results on 2 sources that measured both models.
Results as of 8 October 2026 (catalogue release 2026-10-08-4199ce0620fe).
Qwen3.5-4B or gpt-oss-20b? The short answer
Pick Qwen3.5-4B: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 13.1 against 10.0) at about the same price. Pick gpt-oss-20b only if speed matters more: it writes faster.
- Qwen3.5-4B scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 13.1 against 10.0.
- gpt-oss-20b writes faster: 255 tokens a second against 24.
- Qwen3.5-4B is newer: released 2 Mar 2026, against 5 Aug 2025 for gpt-oss-20b.
- On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: Qwen3.5-4B does better for reasoning and knowledge and writing.
At a glance
| Qwen3.5-4B | gpt-oss-20b | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per million tokens | Not on sale | $0.030 in · $0.15 out |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | – | $0.060 |
| Cheapest host, blended | – | $0.036 (Darkbloom, FP8) |
| Intelligence Index | 13.1 | 10.0 |
| Spring Prompt overall | – | – |
| Output speed, tokens a second | 24 | 255 |
| Context window | – | 131,072 tokens |
| Released | 2 Mar 2026 (newer) | 5 Aug 2025 |
| Weights | Closed | Open |
| Developer based in | China | the US |
Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.
Which is better for what
Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.
| Use case | Qwen3.5-4B | gpt-oss-20b |
|---|---|---|
| Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls | 115 of 165 | 127 of 164 |
| Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge | 125 of 199 | 137 of 198 |
| WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality | 146 of 189 | 171 of 188 |
Every shared result
Each model's best result on every measure both have, grouped by benchmark, with the setting that produced it. The headline measures of each benchmark come first; the rest are under "Show all". Green marks the better value; where a source reports ranges that overlap, neither is marked.
| Measure | Qwen3.5-4B | gpt-oss-20b |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results | ||
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better | 13.1thinking reasoning | 10.0low reasoning |
| GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better | 77.1%thinking reasoning | 68.8%high reasoning |
| Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better | 9.9%thinking reasoning | 11.0%high reasoning |
| UGI Leaderboard reported by UGI Leaderboard · 3 results | ||
| Writing score · UGIscore out of 100, higher is better | 30.8think-prefill reasoning | 24.6low reasoning |
| Requested-length error · UGI% off the requested word count, lower is better | 16.0%think-prefill reasoning | 98.0%low reasoning |
| Style adherence · UGIscore from 0 to 1, higher is better | 0.32no reasoning | 0.31medium reasoning |
Show all 15 results (9 more)
| Measure | Qwen3.5-4B | gpt-oss-20b |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 9 results | ||
| Terminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks, higher is better | 25.8%thinking reasoning | 13.9%high reasoning |
| τ-bench banking% of tasks, higher is better | 6.8%thinking reasoning | 7.0%high reasoning |
| Artificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score, higher is better | 22.6thinking reasoning | 20.7high reasoning |
| IFBench% of instructions, higher is better | 52.0%thinking reasoning | 65.1%high reasoning |
| Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better | 63.0%thinking reasoning | 34.7%high reasoning |
| Output speedtokens per second, higher is better | 23.9thinking reasoning | 255low reasoning |
| Terminal-Bench Hard% of tasks, higher is better | 18.2%thinking reasoning | 10.6%high reasoning |
| Time to first answer tokenseconds, lower is better | 0.71no reasoning | 8.30low reasoning |
| τ²-bench telecom% of tasks, higher is better | 92.1%thinking reasoning | 60.2%high reasoning |
Quick answers
Is Qwen3.5-4B better than gpt-oss-20b?
Pick Qwen3.5-4B: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 13.1 against 10.0) at about the same price. Pick gpt-oss-20b only if speed matters more: it writes faster.
Which is faster, Qwen3.5-4B or gpt-oss-20b?
gpt-oss-20b writes about 255 tokens a second on its usual API, against 24 for Qwen3.5-4B (Artificial Analysis).
Run Qwen3.5-4B and gpt-oss-20b on your own prompt
Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.