AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

gpt-oss-120b Open vs Solar Pro 3 Paid

gpt-oss-120b vs Solar Pro 3 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
$0.15 /M input
$0.6 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
TypeOpen-weight
Context window131K tokens
MultimodalNo
Self-hostYes
Solar Pro 3PaidUpstage
$0.15 /M input
$0.6 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window131K tokens
MultimodalNo
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 Solar Pro 3 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

gpt-oss-120b vs Solar Pro 3 specs

Specgpt-oss-120bSolar Pro 3Winner
MakerOpenAIUpstage–
TypeOpen-weightProprietarygpt-oss-120b
Context window131K tokens131K tokens= Tie
Input price$0.15/M · free self-host$0.15/M= Tie
Output price$0.6/M · free self-host$0.6/M= Tie
Vision / multimodalNoNo–
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableYesNo (API only)gpt-oss-120b
LicenseApache 2.0Proprietarygpt-oss-120b

Price gap & when to choose each

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
Choose Solar Pro 3 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

Capabilitygpt-oss-120bSolar Pro 3
Open weights (downloadable)✓✗
Self-hostable✓✗
Runs fully offline✓✗
Vision / multimodal✗✗
Tool / function calling✓✓
1M+ context window✗✗

Benchmarks: gpt-oss-120b vs Solar Pro 3

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

gpt-oss-120b
Solar Pro 3
Intelligence index
11.6
7.8
Coding index
30.4
16.2
Math index
93.4
–
GPQA
78.2%
72.4%
MMLU-Pro
80.8%
–
Humanity's Last Exam
19.6%
10.3%
Long Context Reasoning
52%
32.3%
LiveCodeBench
87.8%
–
SciCode
34%
25.5%
AIME 2025
93.4%
–
IFBench
69%
71.2%
τ²-Bench
65.8%
86.3%
τ-Bench Banking
12.8%
8.7%
Terminal-Bench
26.2%
12%
Terminal-Bench Hard
23.5%
7.6%
Speed
228.6 tok/s
0 tok/s
Latency
0.51s
0s
Intelligence per $
44.6
29.8

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How gpt-oss-120b and Solar Pro 3 score

🏆 Best value & openness: gpt-oss-120b (4.4 vs 2.9 / 5)
Criteriongpt-oss-120bSolar Pro 3
Cost-efficiency5.05.0
Context window3.53.5
Openness5.01.5
Self-hosting5.01.0
Multimodality3.53.5

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

Solar Pro 3 Paid

Upstage · Proprietary

Solar Pro 3 is Upstage's powerful Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model. With 102B total parameters and 12B active parameters per forward pass, it delivers exceptional performance while maintaining computational efficiency. Optimized...

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 Solar Pro 3?

gpt-oss-120b is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Solar Pro 3 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. Solar Pro 3 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

gpt-oss-120b vs Solar Pro 3 — 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 Solar Pro 3 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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