# gpt-oss-20b vs Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct

> gpt-oss-20b and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 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-phi-3-medium-4k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 16

## Summary

- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. gpt-oss-20b scores higher in 7 categories and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where gpt-oss-20b leads 42.4 to 30.8.

## Snapshot

| | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 32.4 |
| Rank | 249 | 246 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.018 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.09 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- gpt-oss-20b: 37.1 (#185)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 32.3 (#263)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1307 | 1130 |
| SciCode | 34.4% | — |
| WeirdML | 40.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 566.05 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- gpt-oss-20b: 9.2 (#146)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 3.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- gpt-oss-20b: 18.8 (#251)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 20.8 (#214)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1274 | 1127 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 53.2% | — |
| CritPt | 1.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 4% | — |
| DTBench | 68% | — |
| LMCA | 14.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 137.81 | — |

## Math

- gpt-oss-20b: 37.6 (#93)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.9 (#202)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1317 | 1173 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 65.3% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 56.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- gpt-oss-20b: 34.6 (#186)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 29.6 (#226)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1258 | 1108 |
| GPQA Diamond | 60.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 74% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 59.4% | — |

## Multilingual

- gpt-oss-20b: 42.4 (#192)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.8 (#258)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1269 | 1094 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1311 | 1108 |
| LMArena German | 1249 | 1101 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1245 | 1042 |
| LMArena Korean | 1239 | 954 |
| LMArena Russian | 1279 | 1145 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1267 | 1095 |
| LMArena French | — | 1109 |

## Instruction Following

- gpt-oss-20b: 62.0 (#235)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 57.8 (#263)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1236 | 1114 |
| IFEval | 73.2% | — |

## Long Context

- gpt-oss-20b: 37.9 (#203)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 33.9 (#250)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1251 | 1120 |

## Writing & Preference

- gpt-oss-20b: 35.8 (#260)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 34.3 (#267)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-20b | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1288 | 1138 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1201 | 1106 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1268 | 1088 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 666 | — |
| WildBench | 73.7% | — |

## FAQ

### Is gpt-oss-20b better than Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct?

gpt-oss-20b and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 32.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is gpt-oss-20b or Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct better for coding?

gpt-oss-20b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.1 versus 32.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-20b and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct share?

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-20b has 34 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct has 17.