Compare/Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs gpt-oss-120B (low)

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instructvsgpt-oss-120B (low)

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Kimi

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct

Input
$0/M
Output
$0/M
Speed
TTFT
OpenAI

gpt-oss-120B (low)

Input
$0.15/M
Output
$0.6/M
Speed
255 tok/s
TTFT
0.51s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Faster (tok/s)
gpt-oss-120B (low)
Lower Latency
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Benchmarks (1-10)
gpt-oss-120B (low)

Pricing Comparison

MetricKimi Linear 48B A3B Instructgpt-oss-120B (low)
Input ($/M tokens)$0$0.15
Output ($/M tokens)$0$0.6
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct$0.00
gpt-oss-120B (low)$0.21

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
gpt-oss-120B (low)
255 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
gpt-oss-120B (low)
0.51s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
14.424.5
Coding Index
14.215.5
Math Index
36.366.7
GPQA Diamond
41.2%67.2%
MMLU-Pro
58.5%77.5%
LiveCodeBench
37.8%70.7%
AIME 2025
36.3%66.7%
MATH-500
Humanity's Last Exam
2.7%5.2%
SciCode
19.9%36.0%
IFBench
28.1%58.3%
TerminalBench
11.4%5.3%
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct1 wins
10 winsgpt-oss-120B (low)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct or gpt-oss-120B (low)?

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.00/M tokens vs $0.26/M for gpt-oss-120B (low).

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

gpt-oss-120B (low) wins 10 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 1 for Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

gpt-oss-120B (low) generates tokens faster at 255 tok/s vs 0 tok/s. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct also has lower time-to-first-token (0.00s vs 0.51s).

When should I use Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs gpt-oss-120B (low)?

Choose based on your priorities: Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct for lower cost, gpt-oss-120B (low) for stronger benchmark performance, and gpt-oss-120B (low) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.