# gpt-oss-120b vs Grok 3

> Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 36.0 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-oss-120b-vs-grok-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 34

## Summary

- They share 34 benchmarks with published results for both. gpt-oss-120b scores higher in 2 categories and Grok 3 in 7 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Grok 3 leads 30.2 to 12.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 88.9% for gpt-oss-120b and 55.6% for Grok 3.
- gpt-oss-120b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | xAI |
| Noometry Index | 36.0 | 39.6 |
| Rank | 210 | 150 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.037 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.17 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- gpt-oss-120b: 33.2 (#251)
- Grok 3: 41.5 (#113)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 41.8% | 53.3% |
| WeirdML | 48.2% | 37.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1432 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 26% | — |
| SciCode | 36% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 575.62 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.41 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- gpt-oss-120b: 12.1 (#145)
- Grok 3: 30.2 (#69)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 18.7% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 4.4% | — |
| BALROG | — | 29.5% |
| METR Time Horizons | 56.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -21.53 | — |

## Reasoning

- gpt-oss-120b: 19.5 (#236)
- Grok 3: 13.8 (#322)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 22.1% | 36.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 58.6% | 61.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1433 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.94 | 138.34 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 5.5% |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 20% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 2% | — |
| DTBench | 76.3% | — |
| LMCA | 22.1% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 25% | — |

## Math

- gpt-oss-120b: 50.6 (#43)
- Grok 3: 36.2 (#122)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | 55.6% |
| Omni-MATH | 68.8% | 46.4% |
| LMArena Math | 1388 | 1390 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 88.7% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 3.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |

## Knowledge

- gpt-oss-120b: 42.3 (#89)
- Grok 3: 46.0 (#76)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | 75.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.5% | 78.8% |
| Confabulations | 15.7% | 14.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 14.2% | 5.8% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.4% | 65% |
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1420 |

## Multilingual

- gpt-oss-120b: 48.2 (#142)
- Grok 3: 52.5 (#81)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1350 | 1411 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1384 | 1448 |
| LMArena French | 1370 | 1460 |
| LMArena German | 1355 | 1431 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1332 | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | 1283 | 1374 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1416 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1388 | 1417 |

## Instruction Following

- gpt-oss-120b: 69.5 (#168)
- Grok 3: 75.2 (#69)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 83.6% | 88.4% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1409 |

## Long Context

- gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#273)
- Grok 3: 38.7 (#187)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | 58.3% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1319 | 1439 |

## Writing & Preference

- gpt-oss-120b: 46.7 (#213)
- Grok 3: 56.0 (#136)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1366 | 1426 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1274 | 1414 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77.1% | 76.4% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 961 | 1186 |
| WildBench | 84.5% | 84.9% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1340 | 1424 |

## FAQ

### Is gpt-oss-120b better than Grok 3?

Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 36.0 on the Noometry Index.

### Is gpt-oss-120b or Grok 3 better for coding?

Grok 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.5 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-120b and Grok 3 share?

34 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-120b has 48 scored results on Noometry and Grok 3 has 40.