AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

gpt-oss-120b Open vs AMNova Premier 1.0 Paid

gpt-oss-120b vs Nova Premier 1.0 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

gpt-oss-120bOpenOpenAI
$0.04 /M input
$0.17 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
TypeOpen-weight
Context window131K tokens
MultimodalNo
Self-hostYes
AMNova Premier 1.0PaidAmazon
$2.5 /M input
$12.5 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window1M tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Choose gpt-oss-120b if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Nova Premier 1.0 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

gpt-oss-120b vs Nova Premier 1.0 specs

Specgpt-oss-120bNova Premier 1.0Winner
MakerOpenAIAmazon–
TypeOpen-weightProprietarygpt-oss-120b
Context window131K tokens1M tokensAMNova Premier 1.0
Input price$0.04/M · free self-host$2.5/Mgpt-oss-120b
Output price$0.17/M · free self-host$12.5/Mgpt-oss-120b
Vision / multimodalNoYesAMNova Premier 1.0
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableYesNo (API only)gpt-oss-120b
LicenseApache 2.0Proprietarygpt-oss-120b

Price gap & when to choose each

74×cheaper per output token

gpt-oss-120b is ~74× cheaper than Nova Premier 1.0 on output tokens ($0.17 vs $12.5 per M tokens).

Choose gpt-oss-120b if…
  • You want to self-host or run on your cloud
  • You prioritize data privacy & control
  • You want the lowest operating costs
  • You are building open or reproducible AI
AMChoose Nova Premier 1.0 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You need the longer 1M context window
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

Capabilitygpt-oss-120bNova Premier 1.0
Open weights (downloadable)✓✗
Self-hostable✓✗
Runs fully offline✓✗
Vision / multimodal✗✓
Tool / function calling✓✓
1M+ context window✗✓

Benchmarks: gpt-oss-120b vs Nova Premier 1.0

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

gpt-oss-120b
Nova Premier 1.0
Intelligence index
11.6
–
Coding index
30.4
–
Math index
93.4
–
GPQA
78.2%
–
MMLU-Pro
80.8%
–
Humanity's Last Exam
19.6%
–
Long Context Reasoning
52%
–
LiveCodeBench
87.8%
–
SciCode
34%
–
AIME 2025
93.4%
–
IFBench
69%
–
τ²-Bench
65.8%
–
τ-Bench Banking
12.8%
–
Terminal-Bench
26.2%
–
Terminal-Bench Hard
23.5%
–
Speed
202.4 tok/s
–
Latency
0.5s
–
Intelligence per $
44.4
–

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How gpt-oss-120b and Nova Premier 1.0 score

🏆 Best value & openness: gpt-oss-120b (4.4 vs 3.2 / 5)
Criteriongpt-oss-120bNova Premier 1.0
Cost-efficiency5.03.5
Context window3.55.0
Openness5.01.5
Self-hosting5.01.0
Multimodality3.55.0

Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.

What each model is

gpt-oss-120b Open

OpenAI · Open-weight

gpt-oss-120b is an open-weight, 117B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model from OpenAI designed for high-reasoning, agentic, and general-purpose production use cases. It activates 5.1B parameters per forward pass and is optimize

Nova Premier 1.0 Paid

Amazon · Proprietary

Amazon Nova Premier is the most capable of Amazon’s multimodal models for complex reasoning tasks and for use as the best teacher for distilling custom models.

Other models in these families

These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.

Other variants tracked
gpt-oss-120b (batch)gpt-oss-20b (batch)gpt-oss-20bgpt-oss-safeguard-20b

Frequently asked questions

Is gpt-oss-120b as good as Nova Premier 1.0?

gpt-oss-120b is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Nova Premier 1.0 may still lead on the hardest reasoning and agentic work. The gap keeps narrowing — benchmark both on your actual use case before deciding.

Can I run gpt-oss-120b locally?

Yes. gpt-oss-120b has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. Nova Premier 1.0 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

How much cheaper is gpt-oss-120b?

gpt-oss-120b costs $0.17/M output vs $12.5/M for Nova Premier 1.0 — roughly 74x cheaper via API, and free if you self-host.

gpt-oss-120b vs Nova Premier 1.0 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose gpt-oss-120b if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Nova Premier 1.0 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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