Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs OpenAI gpt-oss-120b

Compare Claude Sonnet 4.6 and OpenAI gpt-oss-120b on the metrics that decide an agent workload.

MetricClaude Sonnet 4.6OpenAI gpt-oss-120b
ProviderAnthropicFireworks AI
Input / 1M$3.00$0.15
Output / 1M$15.00$0.60
Cache read / 1M$0.30 (−90%)$0.01 (−90%)
Reuse-adj @55%$4.89$0.21
Context1M131K
Cache capture91%79%
Warm TTFT190ms (−65%)120ms (−64%)
Quality index9079

Teal marks the better value in each row. Reuse-adjusted assumes 55% prefix reuse and a 25% output share.

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 when

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 when it scores higher on the composite quality index, it carries the larger 1M context window, it captures more of the available reuse.

Pick OpenAI gpt-oss-120b when

Pick OpenAI gpt-oss-120b when it is cheaper once prefix reuse is priced in, it answers faster on warm cache hits, it is open-weights for on-prem and regulated lanes.

Verdict

Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads on quality while OpenAI gpt-oss-120b leads on reuse-adjusted cost. Send latency- and budget-sensitive volume to OpenAI gpt-oss-120b and reserve Claude Sonnet 4.6 for the hard requests. Zumik's aliases route between them automatically under policy.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs OpenAI gpt-oss-120b, answered.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or OpenAI gpt-oss-120b cheaper?

At 55% prefix reuse, Claude Sonnet 4.6 blends to about $4.89 per 1M tokens and OpenAI gpt-oss-120b to about $0.21. OpenAI gpt-oss-120b is cheaper on that basis.

Which has the larger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the larger window: 1M vs 131K tokens.

Which captures more reuse?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 shows higher measured cache capture (91% vs 79%) in the Zumik corpus.

Let an alias pick for you.

Route to whichever model wins under current policy automatically. Zumik resolves the alias to the best fit per request, so you never hard-code a loser.