# gpt-oss-120b vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct

> gpt-oss-120b is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-oss-120b-vs-phi-3-small-8k-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 7 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where gpt-oss-120b leads 52.5 to 27.6.

## Snapshot

| | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 36.3 | 29.3 |
| Rank | 217 | 314 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.037 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.17 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- gpt-oss-120b: 33.5 (#256)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1101 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 26% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 41.8% | — |
| SciCode | 36% | — |
| WeirdML | 48.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 20.3% |
| ALE-Bench | 575.62 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.41 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- gpt-oss-120b: 12.2 (#153)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 18.7% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 4.4% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 56.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -21.53 | — |

## Reasoning

- gpt-oss-120b: 20.0 (#245)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1100 |
| SimpleBench | 22.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 58.6% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 20% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 15.9% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 2% | — |
| DTBench | 76.3% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 30.3% |
| LMCA | 22.1% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 25% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 58.1% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.93 | — |
| HellaSwag | — | 77% |
| LiveBench | — | 24% |
| WinoGrande | — | 81.5% |

## Math

- gpt-oss-120b: 52.5 (#50)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1389 | 1151 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 68.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 17.6% |

## Knowledge

- gpt-oss-120b: 42.4 (#96)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1067 |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 15.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 14.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.4% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 90.7% |
| MMLU | — | 75.7% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 58.1% |

## Multilingual

- gpt-oss-120b: 48.0 (#147)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1351 | 1058 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1385 | 1061 |
| LMArena French | 1369 | 1135 |
| LMArena German | 1353 | 1080 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1331 | 966 |
| LMArena Korean | 1282 | 894 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1111 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1389 | 1111 |

## Instruction Following

- gpt-oss-120b: 69.3 (#173)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1087 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 47.2% |
| IFEval | 83.6% | — |

## Long Context

- gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#278)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1319 | 1088 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- gpt-oss-120b: 46.5 (#217)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1365 | 1110 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1275 | 1083 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1340 | 1068 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77.1% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 961 | — |
| WildBench | 84.5% | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 12.9% |

## FAQ

### Is gpt-oss-120b better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?

gpt-oss-120b is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is gpt-oss-120b or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?

gpt-oss-120b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-120b and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-120b has 48 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.