gpt-oss
Verdict
Evidence: Editorial assessmentgpt-oss is OpenAI's pair of open-weight reasoning models, released under Apache 2.0, the most permissive licence in this group. The 20b model is the smaller, easier-to-host option; the 120b model trades hardware cost for capability. Choose gpt-oss when licence simplicity matters more than having the largest model.
Quick facts
| gpt-oss | |
|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI |
| Category | AI Models & Open-Weight LLMs |
| Pricing model | Open weights |
| Status | Active |
| Official site | github.com |
| Data last checked | 5 October 2026 |
Key facts and sources
| Claim | Detail | Evidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model details and licence | OpenAI's open-weight models gpt-oss-120b (117B parameters, 5.1B active) and gpt-oss-20b (21B parameters, 3.6B active) are released under the Apache 2.0 licence. | Verified | openai/gpt-oss on GitHub, 5 October 2026 |
Pricing
No prices are shown because we have not confirmed them on gpt-oss's own pricing page. Go to gpt-oss
Who should use it
- Commercial products that need a permissive licence
- Local or on-premise deployment of a mid-sized reasoning model
Who should skip it
- You need the most capable open model regardless of size (compare Qwen3.8 or Kimi K3)
Limitations and risks
- Smaller than 2026's largest open models.
How it compares: gpt-oss alternatives
Qwen
Alibaba's Qwen family of language models; Qwen3.8 was released as open weights in August 2026, including a 2.4T-parameter flagship.
Gemma
Google DeepMind's family of open-weight language models; Gemma 3n is the mobile-first member and Gemma 4 is the newest generation.
DeepSeek
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's open-weight language models, released under the MIT licence, plus a chat app and API.
Kimi
Moonshot AI's Kimi models; Kimi K3 is a 2.8T-parameter open-weight model with native vision and a 1M-token context window.
Llama 2
Meta's 2023 open-weight language model family. It is a legacy release, superseded by newer Llama and other open-weight models.
Rating
Not yet rated. We show a rating only when at least four of six criteria have documented evidence. How we rate AI tools
Common questions
What licence does gpt-oss use?
Apache 2.0, according to OpenAI's gpt-oss repository.
What sizes does gpt-oss come in?
gpt-oss-120b (117B parameters, 5.1B active) and gpt-oss-20b (21B parameters, 3.6B active).
Sources
- openai/gpt-oss on GitHub · checked 5 October 2026