Model comparison

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs gpt-oss-120b

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 12× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 30 shared benchmarks.

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google

41.5

Rank #133 Confirmed

gpt-oss-120b OpenAI

36.3

Rank #217 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 30 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher in 8 categories and gpt-oss-120b in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where gpt-oss-120b leads 52.5 to 25.9.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is APEX-Agents: 29.3% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and 4.4% for gpt-oss-120b.
  • gpt-oss-120b is cheaper at $0.037 / $0.17 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
  • Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 131K.
  • gpt-oss-120b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and gpt-oss-120b specifications
Gemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
ProviderGoogleOpenAI
Noometry Index41.536.3
Released2026-07-212025-08-05
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M131K
Max output66K41K
Input $ / M tokens$0.30$0.037
Output $ / M tokens$2.50$0.17
Results tracked3948

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Category by category

Coding Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.4 (#104), gpt-oss-120b: 33.5 (#256)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
SciCode41.3%36%
WeirdML39%48.2%
LMArena Coding14531380
ALE-Bench765.27575.62
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—26%
Aider Polyglot—41.8%
LMArena WebDev1440—
AlgoTune—1.41

Agentic & Tool Use Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#107), gpt-oss-120b: 12.2 (#153)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
APEX-Agents29.3%4.4%
Terminal-Bench—18.7%
GDP.pdf10%—
METR Time Horizons—56.6%
Vending-Bench 2—-21.53

Reasoning Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#114), gpt-oss-120b: 20.0 (#245)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
CritPt0%1.1%
Chess Puzzles22%20%
LMArena Hard Prompts14411364
Mystery Game Puzzles19%2%
DTBench83.5%76.3%
LMCA37.6%22.1%
Epoch Capabilities Index145.13139.93
ARC-AGI-210.3%—
SimpleBench—22.1%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—58.6%
NYT Connections (extended)60.4%—
ARC-AGI-153.5%—
Surface Evolver Bench—25%

Math gpt-oss-120b leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.9 (#264), gpt-oss-120b: 52.5 (#50)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202571.1%88.9%
LMArena Math14331389
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)26%—
FrontierMath Tier 40%—
ProofBench13%—
Omni-MATH—68.8%

Knowledge Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.1 (#72), gpt-oss-120b: 42.4 (#96)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
GPQA Diamond83.3%75.8%
LMArena Expert14351356
MMLU-Pro—79.5%
Confabulations—15.7%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—14.2%
GPQA (HELM)—68.4%

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 41.1 (#40), gpt-oss-120b: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
LMArena Vision1268—

Multilingual Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.5 (#63), gpt-oss-120b: 48.0 (#147)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
LMArena Non-English14271351
LMArena Chinese14691385
LMArena French14511369
LMArena German14541353
LMArena Japanese14271331
LMArena Korean14071282
LMArena Russian14431343
LMArena Spanish14421389

Instruction Following Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 74.8 (#85), gpt-oss-120b: 69.3 (#173)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
LMArena Instruction Following14201318
IFEval—83.6%

Long Context Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.9 (#84), gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#278)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
LMArena Longer Query14351319
Fiction.LiveBench—44.4%

Writing & Preference Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.2 (#57), gpt-oss-120b: 46.5 (#217)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.5 Flash Litegpt-oss-120b
LMArena Text14351365
LMArena Creative Writing14201275
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1559961
LMArena Multi-Turn14451340
Short-Story Creative Writing—77.1%
WildBench—84.5%

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better than gpt-oss-120b?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 12× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or gpt-oss-120b?

gpt-oss-120b is cheaper. It lists at $0.037 per million input tokens and $0.17 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or gpt-oss-120b better for coding?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and gpt-oss-120b share?

30 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 39 scored results on Noometry and gpt-oss-120b has 48.

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