The Known Good Updated 25 Oct 2026 Subscribe
OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B ·OpenAI vs Alibaba

OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B — head-to-head comparison

OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b profile Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B profile All comparisons
OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b — OpenAI
Quality
#44 of 65
61based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#24 of 345
190.1
Output tokens per second
Price
#132 of 526
$0.26
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.15 · Out $0.60
Cache hit price
#197 of 412
$0.075
per 1M tokens (−50%)
Context
#462 of 575
131k
tokens (~200 pages)
Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B — Alibaba
Quality
#35 of 65
66based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#118 of 345
90.1
Output tokens per second
Price
#146 of 526
$0.31
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.10 · Out $0.95
Cache hit price
#155 of 412
$0.050
per 1M tokens (−50%)
Context
#288 of 575
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b scores 61 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B scores 66 — a 5-point lead for Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B. They share 3 published evaluations, with OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b ahead on 1 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B ahead on 2.

Blended pricing is $0.26 per 1M tokens for OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b and $0.31 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B — OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b is about 1.2× cheaper.

Throughput is 190 tokens per second for OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b and 90 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B, with time to first token at 0.6s and 1.2s. OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b accepts 131k tokens of context against 262k.

OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 26 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 8 serve both.

Generated from tracked data on 25 Oct 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricOpenAI: gpt-oss-120bQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Known Good Index 61 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 66 based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.26 $0.31
Output tok/s 190 90
Context window 131k 262k
Providers 22 12
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricOpenAI: gpt-oss-120bQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Known Good Index 61 66
Openness Index 60 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b · marker = Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond76 / 84
Mock AIME 2024–2589 / 87
Terminal-Bench19 / 25

Right-hand figures read OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b / Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B. OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b leads on 1 of 3, Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B on 2.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricOpenAI: gpt-oss-120bQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Text Arena 1,366 —
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,352 —
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricOpenAI: gpt-oss-120bQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Input $/1M $0.15 $0.10
Output $/1M $0.60 $0.95
Blended $/1M $0.26 $0.31
Cache read $/1M $0.075 $0.050
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricOpenAI: gpt-oss-120bQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Context window 131k 262k
Max output tokens 66k 236k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Mean throughput and time to first token across hosting providers, over successful measurements from the last 48 hours

Throughput and latency

Means across all tracked providers over successful measurements from the last 48 hours, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricOpenAI: gpt-oss-120bQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Output tokens/s 190 90
Time to first token 0.6s 1.2s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

26 hosts · 8 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b blendedOpenAI: gpt-oss-120b tok/s Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B tok/s
Cerebras $0.45 928 — —
SambaNova $0.34 509 — —
Crusoe $0.10 373 — —
Groq $0.26 352 — —
Nebius $0.26 340 — —
Amazon Bedrock · first party $0.26 247 — —
Parasail $0.26 220 $0.31 94
Novita $0.10 202 — —
BaseTen $0.20 197 — —
Phala $0.26 186 $0.47 131
Mara $0.30 180 — —
Together $0.26 157 — —
CoreWeave $0.07 114 $0.50 107
AkashML $0.07 97 $0.30 73
Google · first party $0.16 84 — —
SiliconFlow $0.26 81 $0.63 47
DigitalOcean $0.15 70 — —
Near AI $0.06 61 — —
DeepInfra $0.07 59 $0.31 123
Venice $0.06 43 $0.33 119
Mancer 2 $0.10 41 — —
DekaLLM $0.07 37 $0.33 123
Io Net — — $0.47 120
Reka · first party — — $0.33 107
AtlasCloud — — $0.50 52
Darkbloom — — $0.21 40

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →