# gpt-oss-120b vs Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct

> gpt-oss-120b is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.0 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-oss-120b-vs-phi-3-medium-4k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. gpt-oss-120b scores higher in 6 categories and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where gpt-oss-120b leads 50.6 to 30.9.

## Snapshot

| | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 36.0 | 32.4 |
| Rank | 210 | 246 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.037 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.17 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- gpt-oss-120b: 33.2 (#251)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 32.3 (#263)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1130 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 26% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 41.8% | — |
| SciCode | 36% | — |
| WeirdML | 48.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 575.62 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.41 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- gpt-oss-120b: 12.1 (#145)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 18.7% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 4.4% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 56.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -21.53 | — |

## Reasoning

- gpt-oss-120b: 19.5 (#236)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 20.8 (#214)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1127 |
| SimpleBench | 22.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 58.6% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 20% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 2% | — |
| DTBench | 76.3% | — |
| LMCA | 22.1% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 25% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.94 | — |

## Math

- gpt-oss-120b: 50.6 (#43)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.9 (#202)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1388 | 1173 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 68.8% | — |

## Knowledge

- gpt-oss-120b: 42.3 (#89)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 29.6 (#226)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1108 |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 15.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 14.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.4% | — |

## Multilingual

- gpt-oss-120b: 48.2 (#142)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.8 (#258)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1350 | 1094 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1384 | 1108 |
| LMArena French | 1370 | 1109 |
| LMArena German | 1355 | 1101 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1332 | 1042 |
| LMArena Korean | 1283 | 954 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1145 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1388 | 1095 |

## Instruction Following

- gpt-oss-120b: 69.5 (#168)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 57.8 (#263)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1114 |
| IFEval | 83.6% | — |

## Long Context

- gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#273)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 33.9 (#250)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1319 | 1120 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- gpt-oss-120b: 46.7 (#213)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 34.3 (#267)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1366 | 1138 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1274 | 1106 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1340 | 1088 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77.1% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 961 | — |
| WildBench | 84.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is gpt-oss-120b better than Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct?

gpt-oss-120b is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.0 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Is gpt-oss-120b or Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (33.2 vs 32.3); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-120b and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-120b has 48 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct has 17.