# OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B vs Qwen 3.5

On provider list prices, OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B costs $0.05 per million input tokens against $0.60 for Qwen 3.5: 12.0x apart. Output is $0.20 against $3.60 (18.0x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## Specifications

| | OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B | Qwen 3.5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | OpenAI | Qwen |
| Access | Open weights | Open weights |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 256K tokens |
| List price, input | $0.05 / M tokens | $0.60 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $0.20 / M tokens | $3.60 / M tokens |
| Cached input | n/a | $0.35 / M tokens |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Fine-tunable | Yes | Yes |

Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-08. Billed price is list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## What the numbers say

Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $130 a month on OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B and $1,980 on Qwen 3.5 at list: a gap of $1,850, or 15.2x.

Qwen 3.5 reads 256K tokens per request against 128K for OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B, 2.0x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

## Choose OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B for

- The lower list price ($0.05 in / $0.20 out per M tokens)
- Fine-tuning under a permissive license (Apache 2.0)

## Choose Qwen 3.5 for

- Multilingual support agents
- Translation-adjacent workflows
- Fine-tuning under Apache 2.0

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen 3.5?

OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $0.05/$0.20 per million tokens in and out against $0.60/$3.60 for Qwen 3.5. Billed on Allocate: $0.053/$0.21 against $0.64/$3.85, list plus 7%.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen 3.5: 262,144 tokens (256K) against 131,072 (128K) for OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B.

### Can I fine-tune OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B or Qwen 3.5?

Both publish open weights (OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B: Apache 2.0; Qwen 3.5: Apache 2.0), so both can be fine-tuned. On Allocate the trained weights stay inside your boundary and belong to you.

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[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/openai-gpt-oss-20b-vs-qwen-3-5) · [OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B](https://allocate.network/models/openai-gpt-oss-20b.md) · [Qwen 3.5](https://allocate.network/models/qwen-3-5.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)