GPT-OSS 20B vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Updated October 14, 2026. Rank says Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is ahead. Price, access, and your workload can each overturn that. Public scores include evidence status and uncertainty.

Decision reading

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the higher public point estimate, 43.54 versus 33.13. Their conditional score ranges overlap. These ranges do not establish rank confidence. 3 results are shared. Category rows resting on Estimated evidence or different benchmark sets are marked directional and do not name a winner.

Model A

GPT-OSS 20B

OpenAI

33.13/100

Supported · Public rank #163

90% interval 19.8–46.4

Model B

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Alibaba

43.54/100

Estimated · Public rank #118

Conditional range 29.2–57.9

Shared results: 3
GPT-OSS 20B only: 4
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B only: 39
Like-for-like categories: 0 / 8

Supported: GPT-OSS 20B · Estimated: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B. Conditional ranges do not establish rank confidence.How the comparison works

Which one for your work

Recommendations appear only when a shared evidence basis or an explicit operating constraint supports the call. Secondary and unsupported use cases stay disclosed below the initial list.

Long documents
Prompts that approach the documented context limit
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the larger documented context window.
Confidence: documented

Show secondary and unsupported calls

Coding work
Code generation, repair, and software-engineering tasks
Not enough matched evidence
GPT-OSS 20B and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B are scored on Estimated evidence for coding, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like.
Confidence: limited
Agentic work
Tool use, computer use, and multi-step task completion
Not enough matched evidence
GPT-OSS 20B and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B are scored on Estimated evidence for agentic, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like.
Confidence: limited
Chat turn cost
1K fresh input + 500 output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Confidence: listed-rates
Cache-heavy agent loop cost
200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
The page does not recommend a cost winner because at least one model cannot fit the stated workload in one request. GPT-OSS 20B does not fit this workload in one request. GPT-OSS 20B has no comparable published API token rate. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.
Confidence: listed-rates
Repository review cost
50K fresh input + 3K output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Confidence: listed-rates

Which one for a specific job

Choose a job from the LLM Selector's task catalog to see the category row it rests on, under the same basis rules as the table below. A directional row stays directional; choosing a job never creates a winner.

Pick the job you would use them for

The same task catalog as the LLM Selector. Each job names the evidence surface it rests on; nothing here adds a new score.

18.6GPT-OSS 20B31.8Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Directional only · BenchAlign v5.8

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the higher coding point estimate. Conditional score ranges do not establish rank confidence.

Coding scores combine specific tasks and setups. Match the editor, harness, and effort to your workflow.

Open the coding leaderboard Shortlist models for this job

Same basis rules as the category table below

Shape of the matched evidence

Only shared public evidence is shown. Sparse evidence stays a ruled list rather than being closed into a radar shape.

Too few matched category axes support a radar. The ruled list below shows only shared benchmark results; positions use each benchmark’s normalized display scale when available.

GPQAKnowledge
Normalized gap 14.5
GPT-OSS 20B:71.5%
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B:86%
GPT-OSS 20B source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B source
SWE-bench VerifiedCoding
Normalized gap 12.7
GPT-OSS 20B:60.7%
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B:73.4%
GPT-OSS 20B source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B source
HLEKnowledge
Normalized gap 10.5
GPT-OSS 20B:10.9%
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B:21.4%
GPT-OSS 20B source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B source

Bars run 0–100 on each benchmark’s normalized display scale

Category results, on a stated basis

Each row shows the public-lane category score for both models: the BenchAlign v5.8 lane for agentic, coding, and knowledge, and the weighted public rows elsewhere, with the same rank each model page reports. A row is like-for-like only when both scores rest on Supported evidence or the same weighted set. Directional and not-comparable rows remain visible, but they never receive a winner.

Agentic

Directional only

GPT-OSS 20B: 14.6; Estimated · #112/124
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 29.2; Estimated · #90/124
Basis: BenchAlign v5.8 lane · 0 vs 11 public rows
Reading: Directional only

Coding

Directional only

GPT-OSS 20B: 18.6; Estimated · #122/149
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 31.8; Estimated · #89/149
Basis: BenchAlign v5.8 lane · 2 vs 6 public rows
Reading: Directional only

Knowledge

Directional only

GPT-OSS 20B: 34.1; Supported · #137/181
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 42.9; Estimated · #105/181
Basis: BenchAlign v5.8 lane · 3 vs 5 public rows
Reading: Directional only

Instruction following

Directional only

GPT-OSS 20B: 79.2; #57/128
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 78.3; #58/128
Basis: Provisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows
Reading: Directional only

Reasoning

Not comparable

GPT-OSS 20B: 49.7; Unranked · 2 rankable rows
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 75.1; Unranked · 2 rankable rows
Basis: Provisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows
Reading: Not comparable

Multimodal

Not comparable

GPT-OSS 20B: Not ranked
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 66.4; #40/54
Basis: Provisional lane · 0 vs 2 weighted rows
Reading: Not comparable

Multilingual

Not comparable

GPT-OSS 20B: Not ranked
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: Not ranked
Basis: Provisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows
Reading: Not comparable

Math

Not comparable

GPT-OSS 20B: Not ranked
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 58.4; #10/12
Basis: Provisional lane · 0 vs 3 weighted rows
Reading: Not comparable

Category scores with the server-provided evidence basis for GPT-OSS 20B and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
Category	GPT-OSS 20B	Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	Basis	Reading
Agentic	14.6Estimated · #112/124	29.2Estimated · #90/124	Directional onlyBenchAlign v5.8 lane · 0 vs 11 public rows	Directional only
Coding	18.6Estimated · #122/149	31.8Estimated · #89/149	Directional onlyBenchAlign v5.8 lane · 2 vs 6 public rows	Directional only
Knowledge	34.1Supported · #137/181	42.9Estimated · #105/181	Directional onlyBenchAlign v5.8 lane · 3 vs 5 public rows	Directional only
Instruction following	79.2#57/128	78.3#58/128	Directional onlyProvisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows	Directional only
Reasoning	49.7Unranked · 2 rankable rows	75.1Unranked · 2 rankable rows	Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows	Not comparable
Multimodal	Not ranked	66.4#40/54	Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 2 weighted rows	Not comparable
Multilingual	Not ranked	Not ranked	Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows	Not comparable
Math	Not ranked	58.4#10/12	Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 3 weighted rows	Not comparable

Ranks count the models scored in each category’s lane, so the agentic, coding, and knowledge denominators (BenchAlign v5.8) differ from the provisional-lane categories. Unranked scores sit on the provisional lane’s scale but never name a winner. Like-for-like rows within 0.5 points read as a practical tie.

Supported evidence per lane · bars run 0–100Methodology

What each workload costs

Three fixed token mixes turn per-token rates into comparable decisions. Each scenario states context fit and whether cached input had to fall back to the published list-input rate.

Chat turn

1K fresh input + 500 output tokens

GPT-OSS 20B: Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies; Fits in one request
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: API rate not published; Fits in one request

GPT-OSS 20B has no comparable published API token rate. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.

Repository review

50K fresh input + 3K output tokens

GPT-OSS 20B: Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies; Fits in one request
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: API rate not published; Fits in one request

GPT-OSS 20B has no comparable published API token rate. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.

Cache-heavy agent loop

200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens

GPT-OSS 20B: Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies; Does not fit in one request; Cached-input rate unavailable
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: API rate not published; Fits in one request; Cached-input rate unavailable

GPT-OSS 20B does not fit this workload in one request. GPT-OSS 20B has no comparable published API token rate. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.

Cached input falls back to the list input rate only where a cached rate is unpublished

Specification differences

Sourced differences are shown directly. Missing facts stay explicit instead of being inferred from a model name or family.

SpecificationGPT-OSS 20BQwen3.6-35B-A3B

Context window

Maximum documented context; output-token limits may be lower.

GPT-OSS 20B

128K

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

262K

API model ID

GPT-OSS 20B

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Cached-input rate

A missing cached-input rate falls back to the listed input rate only in the stated workload estimate.

GPT-OSS 20B

No comparable hosted API rate

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

No comparable hosted API rate

Documented inputs

GPT-OSS 20B

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Documented outputs

GPT-OSS 20B

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Provider availability

GPT-OSS 20B

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Reasoning profile

GPT-OSS 20B

Non-Reasoning

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Reasoning

Weight access

GPT-OSS 20B

Open Weight

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Open Weight

License

GPT-OSS 20B

Open Weight

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Open Weight

Release date

GPT-OSS 20B

2025-08-05

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

2026-04-15

If you already use one of these models

Deployment change: The models list different providers, so authentication, endpoint behavior, limits, and feature support may change.
Quality signal: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the higher public point estimate, 43.54 versus 33.13. Their conditional score ranges overlap. These ranges do not establish rank confidence.
Workload cost: A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Context tradeoff: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the larger documented window (262K).

Run the same representative tasks against both endpoints before changing production traffic.

Questions

Which is better, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the higher public point estimate, 43.54 versus 33.13. Their conditional score ranges overlap. These ranges do not establish rank confidence. The page therefore keeps the decision tied to the specific documented workload.

Which is better for coding, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores higher for coding on the public lane, 31.8 to 18.6. GPT-OSS 20B and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B are scored on Estimated evidence for coding, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like. BenchLM does not name a winner for coding from a directional reading; read the shared benchmark rows directly and test the models on the same task set.

Which is better for agentic tasks, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores higher for agentic tasks on the public lane, 29.2 to 14.6. GPT-OSS 20B and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B are scored on Estimated evidence for agentic tasks, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like. BenchLM does not name a winner for agentic tasks from a directional reading; read the shared benchmark rows directly and test the models on the same task set.

Which costs less, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Both models do not have comparable published API token rates, so this page does not name a universal price winner.

Which has the larger context window, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the larger documented context window: 262K, compared with 128K.

Benchmark evidence

The full public result ledger is available for audit without forcing a wide desktop table onto a phone.

Browse raw public benchmark evidence46 rows

Agentic

Terminal-Bench 2.0
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B51.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
Claw-Eval
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B68.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
QwenClawBench
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B52.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
QwenWebBench
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B1397
Source
Not directly comparable
τ³-bench results
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B67.2%
Source
Not directly comparable
VITA-Bench
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B35.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
DeepPlanning
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B25.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
Toolathlon
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B26.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
MCP Atlas
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B62.8%
Source
Not directly comparable
WideResearch
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B60.1%
Source
Not directly comparable
Gert Labs
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B42.65%
Source
Not directly comparable

Coding

SWE-bench Verified
GPT-OSS 20B60.7%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B73.4%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads this result
React Native Evals
GPT-OSS 20B71%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B—
Not directly comparable
SWE Multilingual
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B67.2%
Source
Not directly comparable
SWE-bench Pro
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B49.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B51.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
LiveCodeBench v6
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B80.4%
Source
Not directly comparable
NL2Repo
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B29.4%
Source
Not directly comparable

Multimodal

MMMU
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B81.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
MMMU-Pro
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B75.3%
Source
Not directly comparable
RealWorldQA
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B85.3%
Source
Not directly comparable
OmniDocBench 1.5
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B89.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
CharXiv
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B78%
Source
Not directly comparable
SimpleVQA
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B58.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
CC-OCR
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B81.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
AI2D_TEST
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B92.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
RefCOCO (avg)
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B92.0%
Source
Not directly comparable
ODINW13
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B50.8%
Source
Not directly comparable
Video-MME (with subtitle)
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B86.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
Video-MME (w/o subtitle)
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B82.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
VideoMMMU
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B83.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
MLVU (M-Avg)
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B86.2%
Source
Not directly comparable

Knowledge

MMLU
GPT-OSS 20B85.3%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B—
Not directly comparable
GPQA
GPT-OSS 20B71.5%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B86%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads this result
HLE
GPT-OSS 20B10.9%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B21.4%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads this result
MMLU-Pro
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B85.2%
Source
Not directly comparable
SuperGPQA
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B64.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
C-Eval
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B90%
Source
Not directly comparable

Math

AIME 2024
GPT-OSS 20B92.1%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B—
Not directly comparable
AIME 2025
GPT-OSS 20B91.7%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B—
Not directly comparable
HMMT Feb 2025
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B90.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
HMMT Nov 2025
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B89.1%
Source
Not directly comparable
HMMT Feb 2026
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B83.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
MMAnswerBench
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B78.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
AIME26
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B92.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)
GPT-OSS 20B—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B20.351%
Source
Not directly comparable

46 public results · 3 shared

Related comparisons

Compare API pricing Read the methodology Open the model selector

Watch GPT-OSS 20B vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

One weekly email when material rank, price, or benchmark evidence changes make this matchup worth revisiting.

Read a sample issue

Join 5,500+ readers.

Last updated October 14, 2026

GPT-OSS 20B vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Decision reading

Which one for your work

Long documents

Coding work

Agentic work

Chat turn cost

Cache-heavy agent loop cost

Repository review cost

Which one for a specific job

What is actually comparable

Shape of the matched evidence

Category results, on a stated basis

Agentic

Coding

Knowledge

Instruction following

Reasoning

Multimodal

Multilingual

Math

What each workload costs

Chat turn

Repository review

Cache-heavy agent loop

Specification differences

Context window

API model ID

Cached-input rate

Documented inputs

Documented outputs

Provider availability

Reasoning profile

Weight access

License

Release date

If you already use one of these models

Questions

Which is better, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which is better for coding, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which is better for agentic tasks, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which costs less, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which has the larger context window, GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Benchmark evidence

Agentic

Coding

Multimodal

Knowledge

Math

Related comparisons

Watch GPT-OSS 20B vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B