GPT-OSS-20B

The smaller sibling of GPT-OSS-120B, released August 2025: a 21B-parameter MoE with 3.6B active, open-weight under Apache 2.0 and designed for edge deployment on 16 GB devices.

Params: 21B, 3.6B active
Context: 131K tokens
Max output: 131K
Cutoff: Jun 2024
Released: Aug 2025
License: Apache 2.0

Visit OpenAI Compare vs other LLMs →

Hosted API price

Cheapest via Geodd · per 1M tokens

USD

Input: $0.03 /1M
Output: $0.14 /1M
Hosted by: 7 providers

Hosted API pricing

How we price

Order

Providers are listed cheapest input rate first, then by output rate, a tie going to the creator's own listing. A provider that lists the model without a published rate sits at the end.

Prices

Base-tier, on-demand rates in USD per 1M tokens, converted at ECB reference rates where a provider publishes in another currency. Cached-input and batch rates show only where a provider publishes them. "Cheapest" marks the one provider with the lowest input and output pair; a tie wears no badge.

Cost

Input rate times the input tokens plus output rate times the output tokens, at the monthly volume set above the table. Cached-input, batch, long-context and reasoning-token billing are not modelled.

Transparency and funding

Affiliates: Affiliate links are marked. We may earn a commission if you click them, but commissions never affect the order.

Every provider serving GPT-OSS-20B, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving GPT-OSS-20B, with its price per 1M input and output tokens and what the volume above would cost
Provider	Input /1M	Output /1M	Cached input /1M	Cost at 10M in + 2M out	Link
Geodd Cheapest	$0.03	$0.14		$0.58	Visit website
Novita	$0.04	$0.15		$0.70	Visit website
Together AI	$0.05	$0.20		$0.90	Visit website
DigitalOcean	$0.05	$0.45		$1.40	Visit website
Replicate	$0.09	$0.36		$1.62	Visit website
EcoHash	$0.20	$0.28	$0.10	$2.56	Visit website
Cloudflare	$0.20	$0.30		$2.60	Visit website

Heads up: Base-tier, on-demand rates per 1M tokens; cached, batch and long-context tiers excluded. A provider may serve a shorter context or a quantized build than the creator's release. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.

Estimated cost to self-host

GPT-OSS-20B needs about 14 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with 32K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 1× RTX 4060 Ti at about $94 a month.

That costs the same as roughly 2B tokens a month on Geodd's API. Self-hosting is more expensive below that volume.

Fits on 1 Single node ≤ 8

What it costs to self-host GPT-OSS-20B at each precision: the memory it needs, the cheapest rental that holds it, that rental's month and the API volume it pays off at
Precision	Memory	Cheapest fit (32K context)(Full 131K context)	Cost /mo	Break-even vs API
4-bit INT4 / FP4	14 GB17 GB	1× RTX 4060 Ti	$94$115	2B tokens /mo2B tokens /mo
8-bit FP8 / INT8	23 GB25 GB	2× RTX 4060 Ti	$187$187	4B tokens /mo4B tokens /mo
16-bit FP16 / BF16	45 GB47 GB	4× RTX 4060 Ti	$374$374	8B tokens /mo8B tokens /mo

Estimates based on median on-demand rates for Nvidia GPUs. Memory is weights plus KV cache for one request, using FP8 KV cache where supported and FP16/BF16 otherwise. Break-even assumes a 5:1 input-to-output ratio. No guarantee of runtime support, usable performance, or that a matching quantized build exists. Pricing methodology.

Similarly priced models

The models nearest GPT-OSS-20B by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Models priced nearest GPT-OSS-20B per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs GPT-OSS-20B
Llama 3.1 8B Meta	$0.025	$0.02	$0.05	131K	Dec 2023	−48%
DeepSeek OCR-2 DeepSeek	$0.03	$0.03	$0.03	8K		−38%
Qwen3.7-Flash Alibaba Cloud	$0.0467	$0.03	$0.13	1M		−3%
GPT-OSS-20B This model OpenAI	$0.0483	$0.03	$0.14	131K	Jun 2024
Llama 3.2 1B Meta	$0.056	$0.027	$0.201	128K	Dec 2023	+16%
Command R7B Cohere	$0.0583	$0.04	$0.15	128K		+21%
Gemma 3 12B Instruct Google Cloud	$0.0583	$0.05	$0.10	128K	Aug 2024	+21%
GPT-OSS-120B OpenAI	$0.0628	$0.039	$0.182	131K	Jun 2024	+30%
Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B Nvidia	$0.075	$0.05	$0.20	262K	Jun 2025	+55%
Llama 3 8B Meta	$0.0833	$0.05	$0.25	8K	Mar 2023	+72%
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B Alibaba Cloud	$0.0917	$0.06	$0.25	262K		+90%

USD per 1M tokens at each model's cheapest listed provider. Blended is the cost of 10M input plus 2M output tokens, spread over the 12M.

Packet·ai

B200 @ $3.75/h on demand

No contract, no spot interrupts, no cluster minimums

Full root SSH, web dashboard, CI/CD ready

Reserve Now

Capabilities

What GPT-OSS-20B accepts and can do, as published by OpenAI.

Text Accepts and generates natural-language text.
Reasoning Thinks before it answers, always on or as a switchable mode.
Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems.
Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON.

Common questions

What is GPT-OSS-20B good for?

Local, edge and low-cost text work under Apache 2.0, small enough for a single consumer GPU.

When is GPT-OSS-20B not a good fit?

Image input, since it is text only. Its knowledge is older than the rest of OpenAI's lineup, and GPT-OSS-120B carries far more parameters under the same licence.

What is the cheapest way to run GPT-OSS-20B?

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Geodd charges $0.03 in / $0.14 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 1x RTX 4060 Ti at $94 a month, which costs the same as about 2B tokens a month on that API.

Can I self-host GPT-OSS-20B?

Yes. The weights are Apache 2.0 licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 14 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $94 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.