Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct | gpt-oss-120b (low) |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.21 | $0.15 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.57 | $0.59 |
Verdict. Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and gpt-oss-120b (low) split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct is strongest on Intelligence Index (18.5). gpt-oss-120b (low) leads on Coding Index (21.2), Intelligence Index (14.9).
Speed. On throughput, gpt-oss-120b (low) generates tokens at 160 tok/s versus 29 tok/s — about 82% faster. On time-to-first-token, gpt-oss-120b (low) responds in 890ms vs 2970ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. ByteDance Seed and OpenAI sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: ByteDance Seed tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while OpenAI often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct costs $14.85 ($178/year); gpt-oss-120b (low) costs $13.35 ($160/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct ≈ $2.19/run, gpt-oss-120b (low) ≈ $1.93/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct ≈ $99/run, gpt-oss-120b (low) ≈ $89/run. gpt-oss-120b (low) becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
gpt-oss-120b (low) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.26/M tokens vs $0.30/M for Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct.
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
gpt-oss-120b (low) generates tokens faster at 160 tok/s vs 29 tok/s. However, gpt-oss-120b (low) has lower time-to-first-token (0.89s vs 2.97s).
Choose based on your priorities: gpt-oss-120b (low) for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and gpt-oss-120b (low) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.