gpt-oss-120b vs Qwen3.6 27B
Qwen3.6 27B leads gpt-oss-120b on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 21.4 to 11.6, and gpt-oss-120b costs 5.4x less per output token ($0.50 vs $2.70 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 20 benchmarks have a result for both.
gpt-oss-120b or Qwen3.6 27B: which to pick
Only Qwen3.6 27B has a coding score, 36.8 on the Vibe Coding Index; gpt-oss-120b has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick gpt-oss-120b for output tokens 5.4x cheaper ($0.50 vs $2.70 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($0.51 against $1.30).
- Shared results
- 20
- gpt-oss-120b only
- 65
- Qwen3.6 27B only
- 5
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Qwen3.6 27B has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Qwen3.6 27B
Qwen3.6 27B leads, 21.4 against 11.6.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
Qwen3.6 27B
Qwen3.6 27B leads, 18.5 against 3.7.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only gpt-oss-120b has a GPQA Diamond result, 78.5%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only gpt-oss-120b has a AIME result, 92.6%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only gpt-oss-120b has a MMLU Pro result, 79.2%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only gpt-oss-120b has a Design Arena: websites result, 968.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3.6 27B
Qwen3.6 27B takes 262K tokens against 131K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
gpt-oss-120b
gpt-oss-120b $0.0003, Qwen3.6 27B $0.0018 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
gpt-oss-120b
gpt-oss-120b $0.51, Qwen3.6 27B $1.30.
Published attempt cost and pass rate
At a glance
- Coding index
- gpt-oss-120b not benchmarked, Qwen3.6 27B 36.8 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Agentic work, 21.6 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI): gpt-oss-120b 33.6% against Qwen3.6 27B 70.0%, 36.4 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- gpt-oss-120b $0.50 against Qwen3.6 27B $2.70 per million output tokens, 5.4x apart.
- Context window
- gpt-oss-120b takes 131K tokens, Qwen3.6 27B 262K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | gpt-oss-120b | Bars | Qwen3.6 27B | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 0 | 4 | ||
| Intelligence | 0 | 2 | ||
| Agentic work | 0 | 2 | ||
| Reasoning | 0 | 4 | ||
| Math | 0 | 1 | ||
| Knowledge | 1 | 2 | ||
| General | 1 | 3 | ||
| All shared boards | 2 | 18 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index04
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | 41.8% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| SWE-bench Verified | 26.0% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| AA Coding Index | 30.4 | 53.7 | Qwen3.6 27B |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 83.2% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 33.6% | 70.0% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 11.9% | Only Qwen3.6 27B measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 87.8% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| SciCode | 34.0% | 42.8% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 23.5% | 34.8% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| Terminal-Bench | 18.7% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| WeirdML | 48.2% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| ALE-Bench | 575.6 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1379 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1387 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| SciCode | 7.7% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 28 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 11.6 | 21.4 | Qwen3.6 27B |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.8 | 146.2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 3.7 | 18.5 | Qwen3.6 27B |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 65.8% | 94.2% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| APEX-Agents | 4.4% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| METR time horizons | 56.6% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -$22 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| BrowseComp-Plus | 67.0% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 36 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index04
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 78.5% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 78.2% | 84.2% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 19.6% | 23.1% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 75.8% | 85.9% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| SimpleBench | 22.1% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 2.0% | 7.0% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1364 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1356 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1368 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 58.6% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 92.6% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | 94.8% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 92.0% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| AA Math Index | 93.4 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 93.4% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 88.9% | 91.1% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 35.1% | Only Qwen3.6 27B measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1389 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1386 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| MathArena | 15.1% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 79.2% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 75.9% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 48.8% | 53.2% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 58.2% | 62.3% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 71.6% | 71.3% | gpt-oss-120b |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.3% | Only Qwen3.6 27B measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 91.4% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 80.8% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1382 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1388 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1355 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1359 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| PRBench Finance | 43.8% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| PRBench Legal | 40.2% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 968 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 924 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 991 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 987 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 901 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 962 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index13
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 45.6% | Only Qwen3.6 27B measured |
| IFBench | 69.0% | 67.6% | gpt-oss-120b |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 52.0% | 77.3% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| DTBench | 76.3% | 78.1% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| LMCA | 22.1% | 34.5% | Qwen3.6 27B |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 77.1% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 25.0% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text | 1366 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1318 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1274 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1375 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1351 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1385 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1353 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1331 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1282 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1370 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1389 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1343 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1353 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1340 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1319 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1306 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1292 | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| MultiChallenge | 45.3% | Not measured | Only gpt-oss-120b measured |
| EQ-Bench 4 | Not measured | 1026 | Only Qwen3.6 27B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
gpt-oss-120b costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
gpt-oss-120b costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
gpt-oss-120b costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | OpenAI gpt-oss-120b | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Qwen |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | August 5, 2025 | April 27, 2026 |
| Context window | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.10 | $0.45 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.50 | $2.70 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | 36.8 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 1 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.51 | $1.30 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is gpt-oss-120b better than Qwen3.6 27B for coding?
Only Qwen3.6 27B has a coding score, 36.8 on the Vibe Coding Index; gpt-oss-120b has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick gpt-oss-120b for output tokens 5.4x cheaper ($0.50 vs $2.70 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($0.51 against $1.30).
Which is cheaper, gpt-oss-120b or Qwen3.6 27B?
gpt-oss-120b costs $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 27B costs $0.45 and $2.70. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, gpt-oss-120b costs $0.51 and Qwen3.6 27B $1.30.
Which has the bigger context window, gpt-oss-120b or Qwen3.6 27B?
Qwen3.6 27B, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks is the gpt-oss-120b vs Qwen3.6 27B comparison based on?
20 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. gpt-oss-120b's coding index rests on 1 independent benchmark and Qwen3.6 27B's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.