# gpt-oss-20b vs Granite 3.1 8b Instruct

> gpt-oss-20b and Granite 3.1 8b Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.5 vs 32.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-oss-20b-vs-granite-3-1-8b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. gpt-oss-20b scores higher in 6 categories and Granite 3.1 8b Instruct in 3 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Granite 3.1 8b Instruct leads 24.1 to 9.3.

## Snapshot

| | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 32.5 | 32.4 |
| Rank | 255 | 258 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.018 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.09 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- gpt-oss-20b: 37.6 (#192)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1306 | 1186 |
| SciCode | 34.4% | — |
| WeirdML | 40.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 566.05 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- gpt-oss-20b: 9.3 (#154)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 3.4% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 27.1% |

## Reasoning

- gpt-oss-20b: 19.3 (#261)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1274 | 1145 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 53.2% | — |
| CritPt | 1.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 4% | — |
| DTBench | 68% | — |
| LMCA | 14.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 137.82 | — |

## Math

- gpt-oss-20b: 39.4 (#103)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1317 | 1152 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 65.3% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 56.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- gpt-oss-20b: 34.6 (#195)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1258 | 1142 |
| GPQA Diamond | 60.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 74% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 59.4% | — |

## Multilingual

- gpt-oss-20b: 42.2 (#197)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1099 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1314 | 1145 |
| LMArena Russian | 1278 | 1092 |
| LMArena German | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1244 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1236 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1267 | — |

## Instruction Following

- gpt-oss-20b: 61.8 (#240)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1236 | 1131 |
| IFEval | 73.2% | — |

## Long Context

- gpt-oss-20b: 37.9 (#209)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1250 | 1162 |

## Writing & Preference

- gpt-oss-20b: 35.5 (#265)
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1287 | 1150 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1201 | 1129 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1268 | 1108 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 666 | — |
| WildBench | 73.7% | — |

## FAQ

### Is gpt-oss-20b better than Granite 3.1 8b Instruct?

gpt-oss-20b and Granite 3.1 8b Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.5 vs 32.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is gpt-oss-20b or Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better for coding?

gpt-oss-20b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.6 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-20b and Granite 3.1 8b Instruct share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-20b has 34 scored results on Noometry and Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13.