GPT-OSS-20B
v20250805OpenAI
OpenAI's edge-optimized open-weight model released August 2025. 21B total params (3.6B active), Apache 2.0 license. Matches o3-mini despite small size. Runs in 16GB memory (edge devices).
Trust Vector Analysis
Dimension Breakdown
🚀Performance & Reliability+
Flagship open-source performance. MoE architecture activates 5.1B of 117B params per token. Matches or beats o4-mini on most benchmarks.
Competition coding and tool use benchmarks
Math competition benchmarks
General knowledge and domain-specific testing
Internal testing
Median latency estimation
95th percentile from community benchmarks
Official specification
Self-hosting provides full control
🛡️Security+
Good base security. Self-hosting provides complete control over safety guardrails and data handling.
OWASP LLM01 testing
Adversarial testing
Self-hosting analysis
Safety testing
Deployment security review
🔒Privacy & Compliance+
Perfect privacy when self-hosted. No data sent to OpenAI. Full compliance control. Ideal for regulated industries.
Self-hosting analysis
Privacy model analysis
Self-hosting review
Data flow analysis
Compliance model review
Privacy architecture review
👁️Trust & Transparency+
Exceptional transparency. Full chain-of-thought access. Complete model weights and architecture disclosed. Open-source enables auditing.
Reasoning transparency
QA testing
Bias benchmarks
Confidence assessment
Documentation review
Training data disclosure review
Safety mechanism review
⚙️Operational Excellence+
Exceptional operational flexibility. Apache 2.0 enables commercial use. Massive deployment ecosystem. Self-host or use managed platforms.
API compatibility review
SDK ecosystem review
Version stability analysis
Monitoring capability review
Support ecosystem assessment
Ecosystem breadth analysis
License review
- +Apache 2.0 open-weight license enables commercial use without restrictions
- +Matches o3-mini performance despite small 21B size (3.6B active)
- +Runs in only 16GB memory (edge devices, consumer GPUs, IoT deployment)
- +Complete data privacy when self-hosted (zero external data transmission)
- +Ultra-low infrastructure costs (~$0.50-1/hr, 1/4 cost of 120B)
- +Full chain-of-thought access and massive deployment ecosystem
- !Smaller capacity than gpt-oss-120b for complex tasks
- !Self-hosting complexity and infrastructure costs
- !Community support vs enterprise SLA
- !Slightly lower performance than flagship closed models
- !No built-in safety guardrails (customizable but requires setup)
Use Case Ratings
code generation
Excellent coding. Matches o4-mini. Configurable reasoning effort. Full chain-of-thought debugging.
customer support
Good for customer support. Self-host for complete data privacy. Configurable reasoning for cost control.
content creation
Strong content creation. Self-hosting enables unlimited generation without API costs.
data analysis
Excellent for data analysis. Keep sensitive data on-premises. Full chain-of-thought for transparency.
research assistant
Outstanding for research. 128K context. Self-host proprietary research data. Full reasoning transparency.
legal compliance
Perfect for legal. Self-host for complete compliance. No data leaves premises. Apache 2.0 license clarity.
healthcare
Ideal for healthcare. Self-host for HIPAA. Complete PHI privacy. No external data transmission.
financial analysis
Excellent for finance. Outperforms o3-mini on math. Self-host proprietary financial data.
education
Great for education. Full chain-of-thought shows reasoning steps. Self-host for institutional control.
creative writing
Good creative writing. Unlimited generation when self-hosted. No API costs for iteration.