Head-to-head comparison
GPT-5.5 (OpenAI) and gpt-oss-safeguard-20b (OpenAI) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.
Snapshot as of 22 September 2026
As of 22 September 2026, GPT-5.5 holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#13 vs #169); gpt-oss-safeguard-20b is 100× cheaper per output token ($0.30/1M vs $30.00/1M); GPT-5.5 offers the longer context window (1M vs 131K tokens); and gpt-oss-safeguard-20b ships open weights.
Evidence: 7 public benchmark observations across 7 boards · finetune of openai/gpt-oss-20b · fp4 (100%). Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.
Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.
Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.
GPT-5.5 ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 22 September 2026: #13 against #169. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it. Their published uncertainty intervals do not overlap, but the aggregate Index does not predict performance on every task; compare the relevant benchmark configurations before choosing.
gpt-oss-safeguard-20b is cheaper on output tokens: $0.30/1M against $30.00/1M. Input tokens are $5.00/1M for GPT-5.5 and $0.075/1M for gpt-oss-safeguard-20b. Prices are the lowest listed API offer ModelCap observed, in USD per million tokens. For 1,000 requests with 2,000 input and 500 output tokens each (2M input + 0.5M output), the listed-rate estimate is $25.00 for GPT-5.5 versus $0.30 for gpt-oss-safeguard-20b. gpt-oss-safeguard-20b costs 98.8% less in this scenario. This excludes caching, batch discounts, prompt-length tiers, tool charges and retries; verify the selected endpoint before budgeting.
GPT-5.5 has the larger context window: 1M tokens against 131K.
The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.
GPT-5.5: API only. gpt-oss-safeguard-20b: Open weights. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.
ModelCap currently lists 3 API providers for GPT-5.5 and 1 for gpt-oss-safeguard-20b, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.
Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 22 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.