Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.1 vs gpt-oss-20b

Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-20b costs 833× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 25 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.1 Anthropic

40.8

Rank #136 Confirmed

gpt-oss-20b OpenAI

32.1

Rank #249 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.1 scores higher in 8 categories and gpt-oss-20b in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Opus 4.1 leads 62.6 to 35.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench: 38% for Claude Opus 4.1 and 3.4% for gpt-oss-20b.
  • gpt-oss-20b is cheaper at $0.018 / $0.09 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.1.
  • Claude Opus 4.1 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
  • gpt-oss-20b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.1 and gpt-oss-20b specifications
Claude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Noometry Index40.832.1
Released2025-08-052025-08-05
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output32K16K
Input $ / M tokens$15$0.018
Output $ / M tokens$75$0.09
Results tracked4834

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 44.3 (#69), gpt-oss-20b: 37.1 (#185)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
WeirdML45.9%40.9%
LMArena Coding14791307
ALE-Bench674.77566.05
SWE-bench Verified73.3%—
LMArena WebDev1390—
SciCode—34.4%
AlgoTune1.34—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 34.8 (#38), gpt-oss-20b: 9.2 (#146)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
Terminal-Bench38%3.4%
GDPval43.6%—
Cybench42%—
DeepResearch Bench48.3%—
LMArena Search1148—
METR Time Horizons66.8%—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 31.6 (#70), gpt-oss-20b: 18.8 (#251)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
Chess Puzzles7%4%
LMArena Hard Prompts14431274
DTBench80%68%
LMCA37.1%14.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index144.11137.81
SimpleBench60%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—53.2%
CritPt—1.4%
EnigmaEval7.2%—
EBR-Bench7.9%—
Mystery Game Puzzles21%—
ForecastBench62—

Math gpt-oss-20b leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 22.0 (#267), gpt-oss-20b: 37.6 (#93)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202568.9%65.3%
LMArena Math14301317
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)12.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%—
Omni-MATH—56.5%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)7.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 41.9 (#93), gpt-oss-20b: 34.6 (#186)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
GPQA Diamond77.3%60.8%
LMArena Expert14391258
Humanity's Last Exam11.5%—
MMLU-Pro—74%
Confabulations17.1%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate11.8%—
GPQA (HELM)—59.4%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.1: 26.2 (#114), gpt-oss-20b: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
VPCT35%—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 52.1 (#90), gpt-oss-20b: 42.4 (#192)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
LMArena Non-English14051269
LMArena Chinese14271311
LMArena German14121249
LMArena Japanese13781245
LMArena Korean13811239
LMArena Russian14211279
LMArena Spanish14481267
LMArena French1432—

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 75.8 (#53), gpt-oss-20b: 62.0 (#235)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
LMArena Instruction Following14361236
IFEval—73.2%

Long Context Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 44.5 (#60), gpt-oss-20b: 37.9 (#203)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
LMArena Longer Query14551251

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.1 leads

Claude Opus 4.1: 62.6 (#70), gpt-oss-20b: 35.8 (#260)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.1gpt-oss-20b
LMArena Text14191288
LMArena Creative Writing14121201
LMArena Multi-Turn14441268
Short-Story Creative Writing84.7%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—666
WildBench—73.7%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.1 better than gpt-oss-20b?

Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-20b costs 833× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.1 or gpt-oss-20b?

gpt-oss-20b is cheaper. It lists at $0.018 per million input tokens and $0.09 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.1 lists at $15 and $75.

Is Claude Opus 4.1 or gpt-oss-20b better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.3 versus 37.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.1 does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.1 and gpt-oss-20b share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.1 has 48 scored results on Noometry and gpt-oss-20b has 34.

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