Compare / Phi 4 vs gpt-oss-20b
Phi 4 vs gpt-oss-20b
Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 18 results on 3 sources that measured both models.
Phi 4 or gpt-oss-20b? The short answer
- gpt-oss-20b is cheaper: $0.060 against $0.088 per million tokens, 31% less.
- gpt-oss-20b scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 10.0 against 5.9.
- gpt-oss-20b writes faster: 249 tokens a second against 42.
- On our business benchmarks, Phi 4 ranks higher for agents and tool use.
- On our business benchmarks, gpt-oss-20b ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.
At a glance
| Phi 4 | gpt-oss-20b | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per million tokens | $0.070 in · $0.14 out | $0.030 in · $0.15 out |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | $0.088 | $0.060 |
| Cheapest host, blended | – | $0.036 (Darkbloom, FP8) |
| Intelligence Index | 5.9 | 10.0 |
| Spring Prompt overall | – | – |
| Output speed, tokens a second | 42 | 249 |
| Context window | 16,384 tokens | 131,072 tokens |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Developer based in | the US | 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 | Phi 4 | gpt-oss-20b |
|---|---|---|
| Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls | 122 of 161 | 124 of 161 |
| Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge | 178 of 195 | 134 of 195 |
| WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality | 175 of 187 | 170 of 187 |
| Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers | 3 of 153 | not measured |
Every shared result
| Benchmark | Metric | Phi 4 | gpt-oss-20b |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Business, management and financeArena rating | 1,256 | 1,323 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Creative writingArena rating | 1,210 | 1,240 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Expert promptsArena rating | 1,268 | 1,314 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Instruction followingArena rating | 1,245 | 1,281 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | OverallArena rating | 1,256 | 1,318 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Writing, literature and languageArena rating | 1,229 | 1,275 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score | 5.90 | 10.0 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | GPQA Diamond% of questions | 57.5% | 68.8% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Humanity's Last Exam% of questions | 3.8% | 11.0% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | IFBench% of instructions | 23.5% | 65.1% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions | 0.0% | 34.7% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Output speedtokens per second | 42.3 | 249 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Terminal-Bench Hard% of tasks | 3.8% | 10.6% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Time to first answer tokenseconds | 1.03 | 8.49 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Τ²-bench telecom% of tasks | 0.0% | 60.2% |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Requested-length error% off the requested word count | 19.0% | 98.0% |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Style adherencescore from 0 to 1 | 0.34 | 0.31 |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Writing scorescore out of 100 | 25.7 | 24.6 |
Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.
Quick answers
Is Phi 4 better than gpt-oss-20b?
It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Phi 4 ranks higher for agents and tool use; gpt-oss-20b ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.
Which is cheaper, Phi 4 or gpt-oss-20b?
gpt-oss-20b costs $0.060 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $0.088 for Phi 4.
Which is faster, Phi 4 or gpt-oss-20b?
gpt-oss-20b writes about 249 tokens a second on its usual API, against 42 for Phi 4 (Artificial Analysis).
Run Phi 4 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.