GPT-OSS 20B vs GPT-4.1 mini

	GPT-OSS 20B	GPT-4.1 mini
Provider	OpenAI	OpenAI
Model id	`openai/gpt-oss-20b`	`gpt-4.1-mini`
Input price	$0.07 / 1M tokens	$0.40 / 1M tokens
Output price	$0.27 / 1M tokens	$1.60 / 1M tokens
Context window	131K tokens	1M tokens
Capabilities	Chat, Reasoning, Tool calling	Chat, Vision, Tool calling, JSON mode
Weights	Open	Closed
Availability	Coming soon	Available
Rate limits	No daily caps; pay per request	Closed-weight.

Cost for 1M input + 1M output tokens

GPT-OSS 20B

$0.34

GPT-4.1 mini

GPT-OSS 20B is about 83% cheaper for this workload at list price. Price is only part of it: free tiers and usage tiers cap how much you can send per day, and a retired model is unavailable at any price. The "Rate limits" row above is the practical difference for a production app.

When to pick which

GPT-OSS 20B — The small GPT-OSS model: fast and inexpensive for lightweight assistants and classification.
GPT-4.1 mini — Closed-weight.

Try GPT-OSS 20B

Same OpenAI request shape; the change is the base URL and key. Full parameters, aliases and pricing on the model page.

curl https://api.inferenceapis.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $INFERENCE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/gpt-oss-20b",
    "messages": [
      {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant."},
      {"role": "user", "content": "Hello! What can you do?"}
    ]
  }'

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.inferenceapis.com/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["INFERENCE_API_KEY"],
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="openai/gpt-oss-20b",
    messages=[
        {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant."},
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello! What can you do?"},
    ],
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "https://api.inferenceapis.com/v1",
  apiKey: process.env.INFERENCE_API_KEY,
});
const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: "openai/gpt-oss-20b",
  messages: [
    { role: "system", content: "You are a helpful assistant." },
    { role: "user", content: "Hello! What can you do?" },
  ],
});
console.log(response.choices[0].message.content);

External prices and limits come from the linked provider pages and were verified on 2026-09-16. Spotted a change? Tell us.