Model comparison

gpt-oss-120b vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.2 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 43× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.

gpt-oss-120b OpenAI

36.3

Rank #217 Confirmed

Mistral Medium 3.5 Mistral AI

40.2

Rank #152 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. gpt-oss-120b scores higher in 3 categories and Mistral Medium 3.5 in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where gpt-oss-120b leads 52.5 to 39.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 58.6% for gpt-oss-120b and 41.4% for Mistral Medium 3.5.
  • gpt-oss-120b is cheaper at $0.037 / $0.17 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
  • Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

gpt-oss-120b and Mistral Medium 3.5 specifications
gpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
ProviderOpenAIMistral AI
Noometry Index36.340.2
Released2025-08-05—
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window131K262K
Max output41K210K
Input $ / M tokens$0.037$1.50
Output $ / M tokens$0.17$7.50
Results tracked4822

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

gpt-oss-120b: 33.5 (#256), Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Coding13801461
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)26%—
Aider Polyglot41.8%—
LMArena WebDev—1264
SciCode36%—
WeirdML48.2%—
ALE-Bench575.62—
AlgoTune1.41—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

gpt-oss-120b: 12.2 (#153), Mistral Medium 3.5: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
Terminal-Bench18.7%—
APEX-Agents4.4%—
METR Time Horizons56.6%—
Vending-Bench 2-21.53—

Reasoning gpt-oss-120b leads

gpt-oss-120b: 20.0 (#245), Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
Kagi LLM Benchmark58.6%41.4%
LMArena Hard Prompts13641436
Epoch Capabilities Index139.93141.35
SimpleBench22.1%—
NYT Connections (extended)—12.9%
CritPt1.1%—
Chess Puzzles20%—
Mystery Game Puzzles2%—
DTBench76.3%—
LMCA22.1%—
Surface Evolver Bench25%—

Math gpt-oss-120b leads

gpt-oss-120b: 52.5 (#50), Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Math13891431
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202588.9%—
Omni-MATH68.8%—

Knowledge gpt-oss-120b leads

gpt-oss-120b: 42.4 (#96), Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Expert13561432
GPQA Diamond75.8%—
MMLU-Pro79.5%—
Confabulations15.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate14.2%—
GPQA (HELM)68.4%—

Multimodal Not comparable

gpt-oss-120b: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Vision—1223

Multilingual Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

gpt-oss-120b: 48.0 (#147), Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Non-English13511404
LMArena Chinese13851442
LMArena French13691448
LMArena German13531451
LMArena Korean12821385
LMArena Russian13431395
LMArena Spanish13891409
LMArena Japanese1331—

Instruction Following Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

gpt-oss-120b: 69.3 (#173), Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Instruction Following13181415
IFEval83.6%—

Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#278), Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Longer Query13191415
Fiction.LiveBench44.4%—

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

gpt-oss-120b: 46.5 (#217), Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarkgpt-oss-120bMistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Text13651421
LMArena Creative Writing12751374
LMArena Multi-Turn13401423
Short-Story Creative Writing77.1%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing961—
WildBench84.5%—
EQ-Bench 4—993

Frequently asked questions

Is gpt-oss-120b better than Mistral Medium 3.5?

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.2 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 43× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, gpt-oss-120b or Mistral Medium 3.5?

gpt-oss-120b is cheaper. It lists at $0.037 per million input tokens and $0.17 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Is gpt-oss-120b or Mistral Medium 3.5 better for coding?

Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-120b and Mistral Medium 3.5 share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-120b has 48 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22.

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