GPT OSS 20B vs Qwen3 30B A3B

GPT OSS 20B leads llmrun Score 96.3 to 93.9 (ranges overlap); both fit 24 GB at Q4_K_M.

Model A · OpenAI

GPT OSS 20B

96.3llmrun Score

20.9B · 4.2B active · 128K context · Apache 2.0 · Aug 2025

ChatFunctions

Model B · Alibaba

Qwen3 30B A3B

93.9llmrun Score

30.5B · 3.4B active · 40K context · Apache 2.0 · Apr 2025

ChatFunctions

Which should you choose?

Choose GPT OSS 20B if you want…

Higher llmrun Score
96.3 vs 93.9, ranges overlap
Stronger at reasoning
91.3 vs 83.7
Fits a 12 GB GPU
IQ4_XS · 11.8 GB; Qwen3 30B A3B needs 9.5 GB at its smallest quant
Lighter on memory
12.9 vs 18.7 GB at Q4_K_M
Longer context window
128K vs 40K tokens
Newer release
Aug 2025 vs Apr 2025

Qwen3 30B A3B: no clear edge over GPT OSS 20B in the data we have.

On your hardware

Each model at its default quant (Q4_K_M), a smaller one when it must. Estimates, ±20%.

MemoryGPT OSS 20BQwen3 30B A3B

8 GB

RTX 4060 · 8 GB tier

GPT OSS 20B

IQ2_M · ~103 tok/s

7.6 GB · up to 32Kfits

Qwen3 30B A3B

Doesn't fit

smallest quant needs 9.5 GB

12 GB

RTX 3060 12GB · 12 GB tier

GPT OSS 20B

IQ4_XS · ~89 tok/s

11.8 GB · up to 16Kbetter quant

Qwen3 30B A3B

IQ2_M · ~130 tok/s

11.4 GB · up to 16K

16 GB

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB · 16 GB tier

GPT OSS 20B

Q4_K_M · ~98 tok/s

13.1 GB · up to 128Kmore headroom

Qwen3 30B A3B

Q3_K_M · ~119 tok/s

16 GB · up to 16K

24 GBreference

RTX 4090 · 24 GB tier

GPT OSS 20B

Q4_K_M · ~190 tok/s

13.1 GB · up to 128K

Qwen3 30B A3B

Q4_K_M · ~173 tok/s

19.4 GB · up to 40K

32 GB

RTX 5090 · 32 GB tier

GPT OSS 20B

Q4_K_M · ~282 tok/s

13.1 GB · up to 128Kfaster

Qwen3 30B A3B

Q4_K_M · ~227 tok/s

19.4 GB · up to 40K

48 GB

RTX A6000 · 48 GB tier

GPT OSS 20B

Q4_K_M · ~154 tok/s

13.1 GB · up to 128K

Qwen3 30B A3B

Q4_K_M · ~148 tok/s

19.4 GB · up to 40K

Mac 32 GB

Mac Mini M4 · Macs

GPT OSS 20B

Q4_K_M · ~28 tok/s

13.1 GB · up to 128K

Qwen3 30B A3B

Q4_K_M · ~29 tok/s

19.4 GB · up to 40K

Mac 64 GB

Mac Studio M4 Max · Macs

GPT OSS 20B

Q4_K_M · ~86 tok/s

13.1 GB · up to 128Kfaster

Qwen3 30B A3B

Q4_K_M · ~67 tok/s

19.4 GB · up to 40K

Mac 128 GB

Mac Studio M4 Max · Macs

GPT OSS 20B

Q4_K_M · ~86 tok/s

13.1 GB · up to 128Kfaster

Qwen3 30B A3B

Q4_K_M · ~67 tok/s

19.4 GB · up to 40K

Reference GPU: RTX 4090. Tinted cell = the better pick on that machine (fits, more headroom, or at least 10% faster).

llmrun Score

with its 90% range · bars share one scale

GPT OSS 20B Qwen3 30B A3B

Overall

GPT OSS 20B

96.393–99

Qwen3 30B A3B

93.991–97

Coding

GPT OSS 20B

100.992–110

Qwen3 30B A3B

no data

Science

GPT OSS 20B

92.485–100

Qwen3 30B A3B

no data

Reasoning

GPT OSS 20B

91.383–100

Qwen3 30B A3B

83.775–93

GPT OSS 20B · #63 of 100 open models · #15 of 35 that fit 24 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B · #68 of 100 open models · #17 of 35 that fit 24 GB

Benchmarks

5 shared boards: GPT OSS 20B leads 3, Qwen3 30B A3B leads 2 · Benchmarks imported Oct 2026

BoardGPT OSS 20BQwen3 30B A3B

GPQA Diamond

GPT OSS 20B

60.8%#42/98 open

IndependentEpoch AI · Aug 2025

Qwen3 30B A3B

61.7%#41/98 open

IndependentEpoch AI · Apr 2025

AIME 2024/2025

GPT OSS 20B

65.3%#34/86 open

IndependentEpoch AI · Aug 2025

Qwen3 30B A3B

62.8%#35/86 open

IndependentEpoch AI · Apr 2025

WeirdML

GPT OSS 20B

40.9%#21/46 open

IndependentEpoch AI · Aug 2025

Qwen3 30B A3B

29.8%#38/46 open

IndependentEpoch AI · Apr 2025

DTBench

GPT OSS 20B

68.0%#34/68 open

Lab-reportedEpoch AI · Aug 2025

Qwen3 30B A3B

60.3%#47/68 open

Lab-reportedEpoch AI · Apr 2025

LMCA

GPT OSS 20B

14.5%#43/54 open

Lab-reportedEpoch AI · Aug 2025

Qwen3 30B A3B

15.8%#40/54 open

Lab-reportedEpoch AI · Apr 2025

7 more boards (other shared and single-model boards)

LMArena Text

GPT OSS 20B

1317.4#97/187 open

ArenaLMArena · Oct 2026

Qwen3 30B A3B

1326.7#90/187 open

ArenaLMArena · Oct 2026

Only GPT OSS 20B (5)

Only Qwen3 30B A3B (1)

Fiction.LiveBench40.6%

VRAM by quantization

Memory to load the model and 2K context; below it, the total at 32K and 128K context. Lighter side in bold.

QuantGPT OSS 20BQwen3 30B A3B

Q2_K

GPT OSS 20B

9.3 GB11.5 GB file

32K 9.8 GB · 128K 11.5 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

13.4 GB11.3 GB file

32K 14.9 GB · 128K —

Q3_K_S

GPT OSS 20B

9.5 GB11.5 GB file

32K 10.0 GB · 128K 11.7 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

13.8 GB13.3 GB file

32K 15.3 GB · 128K —

Q3_K_M

GPT OSS 20B

10.6 GB11.5 GB file

32K 11.1 GB · 128K 12.8 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

15.3 GB14.7 GB file

32K 16.8 GB · 128K —

Q4_0

GPT OSS 20B

10.8 GB11.5 GB file

32K 11.3 GB · 128K 13.0 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

15.7 GB17.4 GB file

32K 17.2 GB · 128K —

Q4_K_M

GPT OSS 20B

12.9 GB11.6 GB file

32K 13.4 GB · 128K 15.1 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

18.7 GB18.6 GB file

32K 20.2 GB · 128K —

Q5_K_M

GPT OSS 20B

15.3 GB11.7 GB file

32K 15.8 GB · 128K 17.5 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

22.2 GB21.7 GB file

32K 23.7 GB · 128K —

Q6_K

GPT OSS 20B

17.6 GB12.0 GB file

32K 18.1 GB · 128K 19.8 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

25.6 GB25.1 GB file

32K 27.1 GB · 128K —

Q8_0

GPT OSS 20B

21.3 GB~20.9 GB file

32K 21.8 GB · 128K 23.5 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

30.9 GB32.5 GB file

32K 32.4 GB · 128K —

19 more quants

IQ2_XXS

GPT OSS 20B

6.1 GB~5.8 GB file

32K 6.6 GB · 128K 8.3 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

8.8 GB10.4 GB file

32K 10.3 GB · 128K —

IQ2_XS

GPT OSS 20B

6.7 GB~6.3 GB file

32K 7.2 GB · 128K 8.9 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

9.6 GB9.1 GB file

32K 11.1 GB · 128K —

IQ2_S

GPT OSS 20B

6.9 GB~6.5 GB file

32K 7.4 GB · 128K 9.1 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

9.9 GB9.2 GB file

32K 11.5 GB · 128K —

IQ2_M

GPT OSS 20B

7.4 GB~7.1 GB file

32K 7.9 GB · 128K 9.6 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

10.7 GB10.9 GB file

32K 12.2 GB · 128K —

IQ3_XXS

GPT OSS 20B

8.5 GB11.6 GB file

32K 9.0 GB · 128K 10.7 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

12.2 GB12.9 GB file

32K 13.7 GB · 128K —

Q2_K_S

GPT OSS 20B

8.7 GB12.1 GB file

32K 9.2 GB · 128K 10.9 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

not listed

IQ3_XS

GPT OSS 20B

9.0 GB11.6 GB file

32K 9.5 GB · 128K 11.2 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

13.0 GB12.7 GB file

32K 14.5 GB · 128K —

IQ3_S

GPT OSS 20B

9.3 GB12.1 GB file

32K 9.8 GB · 128K 11.5 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

13.4 GB14.0 GB file

32K 14.9 GB · 128K —

IQ3_M

GPT OSS 20B

9.8 GB11.6 GB file

32K 10.3 GB · 128K 12.0 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

14.1 GB14.1 GB file

32K 15.7 GB · 128K —

Q3_K_L

GPT OSS 20B

11.1 GB11.5 GB file

32K 11.6 GB · 128K 13.3 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

16.1 GB15.9 GB file

32K 17.6 GB · 128K —

IQ4_XS

GPT OSS 20B

11.6 GB11.6 GB file

32K 12.1 GB · 128K 13.8 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

16.8 GB16.4 GB file

32K 18.3 GB · 128K —

IQ4_NL

GPT OSS 20B

12.1 GB11.6 GB file

32K 12.6 GB · 128K 14.3 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

17.6 GB17.3 GB file

32K 19.1 GB · 128K —

Q4_1

GPT OSS 20B

12.1 GB11.6 GB file

32K 12.6 GB · 128K 14.3 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

17.6 GB19.2 GB file

32K 19.1 GB · 128K —

Q4_K_S

GPT OSS 20B

12.1 GB11.6 GB file

32K 12.6 GB · 128K 14.3 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

17.6 GB17.5 GB file

32K 19.1 GB · 128K —

Q4_K_L

GPT OSS 20B

13.2 GB11.9 GB file

32K 13.7 GB · 128K 15.4 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

19.1 GB18.9 GB file

32K 20.6 GB · 128K —

Q5_0

GPT OSS 20B

not listed

Qwen3 30B A3B

19.5 GB21.1 GB file

32K 21.0 GB · 128K —

Q5_K_S

GPT OSS 20B

14.8 GB11.7 GB file

32K 15.3 GB · 128K 17.0 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

21.4 GB21.1 GB file

32K 22.9 GB · 128K —

Q5_K_L

GPT OSS 20B

15.5 GB11.9 GB file

32K 16.0 GB · 128K 17.7 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

22.5 GB21.9 GB file

32K 24.1 GB · 128K —

BF16

GPT OSS 20B

42.2 GB~41.8 GB file

32K 42.7 GB · 128K 44.4 GB

Qwen3 30B A3B

61.5 GB61.1 GB file

32K 63.0 GB · 128K —

How to run each

GPT OSS 20B

Ollama · Q4_K_M

$ollama run hf.co/unsloth/gpt-oss-20b-GGUF:Q4_K_M

All ways to run GPT OSS 20B →

Qwen3 30B A3B

Ollama · Q4_K_M

$ollama run hf.co/MaziyarPanahi/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF:Q4_K_M

All ways to run Qwen3 30B A3B →

Specifications

Specifications of GPT OSS 20B and Qwen3 30B A3B
Spec	GPT OSS 20B	Qwen3 30B A3B
Publisher	OpenAI	Alibaba
Parameters	20.9B	30.5B
Active parameters	4.2B per token	3.4B per token
Architecture	GptOssForCausalLM	Qwen3MoeForCausalLM
Context	128K tokens	40K tokens
Modalities	Chat, Function-calling	Chat, Function-calling
License	Apache 2.0	Apache 2.0
Released	Aug 2025	Apr 2025

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, GPT OSS 20B or Qwen3 30B A3B?

GPT OSS 20B leads llmrun Score 96.3 to 93.9 (ranges overlap); both fit 24 GB at Q4_K_M. Choose GPT OSS 20B for higher llmrun Score and stronger at reasoning.

Which needs less VRAM, GPT OSS 20B or Qwen3 30B A3B?

At Q4_K_M, GPT OSS 20B requires 12.9 GB while Qwen3 30B A3B needs 18.7 GB, making GPT OSS 20B the easier model to run on your local setup.

Which is faster on RTX 4090?

Estimated decode speed on RTX 4090 is about 190 tok/s for GPT OSS 20B (Q4_K_M) and 173 tok/s for Qwen3 30B A3B (Q4_K_M), so GPT OSS 20B is faster. Estimates, ±20%.

Can I run GPT OSS 20B or Qwen3 30B A3B on a 16 GB GPU?

GPT OSS 20B fits at Q4_K_M; Qwen3 30B A3B fits at Q3_K_M.

Which has a longer context window, GPT OSS 20B or Qwen3 30B A3B?

GPT OSS 20B supports 131,072 tokens and Qwen3 30B A3B supports 40,960 tokens.