gpt-oss-120b
OpenAI · reasoning checkpoint
Only the post-trained reasoning checkpoint is public; MoE weights were quantized to MXFP4 during post-training.
Open in the comparison table Hugging Face ↗ Paper ↗
KV calculations use one sequence at 131,072 tokens and 16-bit cache elements. They include bounded sliding-window caches. This is retained cache payload, not peak prefill memory. The comparison table also offers sourced mixed-precision layouts, including quantization scales.
Release
- Released
2025-08-05
Date the weights (or, if earlier, the technical report) were first made public, YYYY-MM-DD, as dated by the publisher. A Hugging Face repository creation date is used only when no dated publisher page exists, with a note.
- License
apache-2.0
Source: model-card · README.md YAML front matter
license: apache-2.0
License of the released weights as declared by the publisher (model card metadata or license file), e.g. apache-2.0, mit, or the name of a custom license.
- Input modalities
text
Source: paper · §1 Introduction
these text-only models are compatible with our Responses API
Input modalities of the released checkpoint as the publisher states them, from: text, image, video, audio, joined with ' + ' in that order ("text", "text + image + video").
Parameters
- Total params
116.8B parameters
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2, Table 1
Total Parameters 116.83B 20.91B
Total parameter count as reported by the publisher. See params.note for whether embeddings, MTP heads or vision towers are included.
- Active params
5.13B parameters
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2, Table 1
Active Parameters 5.13B 3.61B
Parameters used per token in the forward pass, as reported by the publisher.
- Active non-embedding (stated)
4.55B parameters
Inferred from the source; see the explanation below.
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2, Table 1 caption
Unembedding parameters are counted towards active, but not embeddings.
5.13B − 201,088 × 2,880 (unembedding, counted as active; input embedding not counted) = ~4.55B.
Active parameters excluding the input embedding and the output head (unembedding). Stated by the publisher, or computed from params.active by subtracting vocab × d_model for each of the embedding and output head that params.active is stated to include (basis inferred, note with the arithmetic). Not disclosed when the scope of params.active is not stated.
- Counted total params
116.8B parameters
Calculated: embedding + output head + all experts + other weights, openai/gpt-oss-120b@b5c939d safetensors headers; reproduces stated total (backbone) and active (with output head)
Parameters of the text backbone counted from the released checkpoint's safetensors headers (embedding, output head, all experts and other weights; excluding MTP modules, vision/audio towers and n-gram lookup tables). Shown only when the counts reproduce the publisher's stated total and active parameters within 5% under some scope.
- Counted embedding + head
1.158B parameters
Calculated: input embedding + output head, openai/gpt-oss-120b@b5c939d safetensors headers
Input embedding plus output head (once if tied), counted from the checkpoint.
- Non-emb. params (counted)
115.7B parameters
Calculated: dense + routed backbone weights; excludes input embedding, output head, lookup tables, MTP and other modalities, openai/gpt-oss-120b@b5c939d safetensors headers; reproduces stated total (backbone) and active (with output head)
Language backbone weights excluding input embeddings, output head, lookup/Engram tables, MTP modules and vision/audio towers. Equals params.counted_total minus params.counted_embedding. Same validation as params.counted_total.
- Largest layer (counted)
3.213B parameters
Calculated: max(sum of dense and routed weights sharing a full layers.<index> tensor path), all experts included, openai/gpt-oss-120b@b5c939d safetensors headers
Largest group of language-backbone weights sharing a full layers.<index> tensor path, including every routed expert. Excludes lookup/Engram tables, embeddings, output head, MTP and other modalities. Hybrid checkpoints may store mixers and FFNs as separate layers. All-gather volume also depends on wrapping, sharding and dtype.
- Active non-emb. (counted)
4.554B parameters
Calculated: non-expert weights + routed experts × 4/128, excluding embedding and output head, openai/gpt-oss-120b@b5c939d safetensors headers; reproduces stated total (backbone) and active (with output head)
Active parameters per token excluding the input embedding and output head, counted from the checkpoint as all non-expert weights plus routed-expert weights × top_k / experts. Same validation as params.counted_total.
- Counting scope
Unembedding counted as active, input embedding not; 1.16B embed + unembed.
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2, Table 1 caption
Unembedding parameters are counted towards active, but not embeddings.
What the publisher's counts include or exclude (MTP modules, embeddings, vision encoder, n-gram tables).
- Embedding params
1.16B parameters
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2, Table 1
Embed + Unembed 1.16B 1.16B
Parameters in input embedding and output head, as reported.
Shape
- Layers
36
Source: config · /num_hidden_layers
Number of transformer blocks in the main backbone (attention or token mixer plus FFN), excluding MTP modules.
- d_model
2,880
Source: config · /hidden_size
Residual stream width.
- Vocab
201,088
Source: config · /vocab_size
Embedding table rows (vocab_size in config, may include padding).
- Tied embeddings
No
Source: config · /tie_word_embeddings
Input embedding and output head share weights.
- Tokenizer
o200k_harmony: BPE extending o200k (GPT-4o, o4-mini) with harmony chat-format tokens
Source: paper · PDF p.5 §2.3 Tokenizer
This is a Byte Pair Encoding (BPE) which extends the o200k tokenizer used for other OpenAI models such as GPT-4o and OpenAI o4-mini
Tokenizer type and lineage as described by the publisher (e.g. byte-level BPE shared with an earlier model).
- d_model / layers
80
Calculated: d_model / layers
Width-to-depth ratio, d_model divided by the number of blocks.
Attention
- Token mixers
GQA, SWA
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Attention
Following GPT-3, attention blocks alternate between banded window and fully dense patterns [10][11], where the bandwidth is 128 tokens.
Token-mixing layer types in the backbone, e.g. GQA, MLA, SWA, Gated DeltaNet, Mamba-2, DSA (DeepSeek sparse attention).
- Layer layout
1 SWA : 1 global
Inferred from the source; see the explanation below.
Source: config · config.json; /layer_types
"layer_types": [ "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention", "sliding_attention", "full_attention" ]
Config /layer_types alternates strictly, starting with a sliding-window layer. Ordered 36-layer backbone from /layer_types; auxiliary modules are excluded.
Token-mixer order, summarized as a pattern or layer positions. The fact's optional sequence lists each mixer in order; a ratio alone does not establish the order. Auxiliary prediction modules and standalone FFNs are excluded.
- Global-attention layers
18
Source: config · /layer_types | count full_attention
Layers whose KV cache grows with full context (dense or sparse global attention, MLA). Excludes sliding-window and linear/recurrent layers.
- SWA : global
1
Calculated: attn.local_layers / attn.global_layers
attn.local_layers divided by attn.global_layers, the sliding-window to global interleave ratio (5 for '5 SWA : 1 global').
- Sliding-window layers
18
Source: config · /layer_types | count sliding_attention
Layers with a fixed attention window.
- Query heads
64
Source: config · /num_attention_heads
Query heads in the global-attention layers.
- KV heads
8
Source: config · /num_key_value_heads
Key/value heads in the global-attention layers. Not applicable to MLA, whose cache is a shared latent.
- Heads × head dim
4,096
Calculated: heads × head_dim
attn.heads × attn.head_dim, the query projection width of global layers.
- Q heads / KV head
8
Calculated: heads / kv_heads
attn.heads divided by attn.kv_heads in global layers.
- QK head dim
64
Source: config · /head_dim
Query/key dimension per head in global-attention layers (for MLA, nope + rope dims).
- Window
128 tokens
Source: config · /sliding_window
Sliding-window size of the local layers.
- SWA KV heads
8
Source: config · /num_key_value_heads
Same attribute as the full-attention layers (GptOssAttention.__init__).
KV heads in sliding-window layers (stated even when equal to attn.kv_heads).
- SWA query heads
64
Source: config · /num_attention_heads
GptOssAttention reads the same head counts, head_dim and rotary embedding for both layer types; only sliding_window differs.
Query heads in sliding-window layers (stated even when equal to attn.heads).
- SWA QK head dim
64
Source: config · /head_dim
Same attribute as the full-attention layers (GptOssAttention.__init__).
Query/key head dimension in sliding-window layers. Value head dimensions may differ; see attn.local_v_head_dim.
- Positional encoding
RoPE
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Attention
We apply rotary position embeddings [14] and extend the context length of dense layers to 131,072 tokens using YaRN [15].
Positional scheme in global layers: RoPE, partial RoPE, NoPE, or mixed per layer type.
- RoPE base
150,000
Source: config · /rope_theta
RoPE base frequency of the global layers at release.
- SWA RoPE base
150,000
Source: config · /rope_theta
GptOssModel builds one rotary embedding shared by both layer types.
RoPE base frequency of the sliding-window layers (stated even when equal to attn.rope_theta).
- QK norm
No
Source: code · modeling_gpt_oss.py; GptOssAttention.forward
query_states = self.q_proj(hidden_states).view(hidden_shape).transpose(1, 2)
Queries and keys go from projection straight to RoPE; no norm module.
Queries and keys are normalized per head before the dot product.
- Attention sinks
learned per-head sink logit in the softmax denominator, all layers
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Attention
Each attention head has a learned bias in the denominator of the softmax, similar to off-by-one attention and attention sinks
Learned sink logits or sink bias in the softmax, with the layer types that use them.
- QKV bias
Yes
Source: config · /attention_bias
Query/key/value projections have bias terms.
Feed-forward
- Activation
SwiGLU
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Mixture-of-Experts
The MoE blocks use the gated SwiGLU [9] activation function
FFN activation (SwiGLU, GeGLU, ...).
- Activation clamp
gate clamped to ≤7, up clamped to [-7, 7]; output (up + 1) · gate · σ(1.702 · gate); all MoE layers
Source: code · modeling_gpt_oss.py; GptOssExperts._apply_gate
up = up.clamp(min=-self.limit, max=self.limit)
Limit 7.0 from config /swiglu_limit, α 1.702 from GptOssConfig default; the card calls this clamping plus a residual connection (footnote 1).
Clamping of GLU gate / up activations (e.g. SwiGLU limit 7), with the layers it applies to.
- FFN bias
Yes
Source: code · modeling_gpt_oss.py; GptOssExperts.__init__
self.gate_up_proj_bias = nn.Parameter(torch.empty(self.num_experts, 2 * self.intermediate_size))
FFN projections have bias terms.
Mixture of experts
- Routed experts
128
Source: config · /num_local_experts
Routed experts per MoE layer.
- Experts per token
4
Source: config · /num_experts_per_tok
Routed experts selected per token.
- Expert dim
2,880
Source: config · /intermediate_size
Intermediate width of one routed expert.
- Leading dense layers
0
Source: code · modeling_gpt_oss.py; GptOssDecoderLayer.__init__
self.mlp = GptOssMLP(config)
Every decoder layer uses the MoE block.
Number of initial blocks that use a dense FFN instead of MoE.
- Router score
softmax (over the top-k selected logits)
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Mixture-of-Experts
weight the output of each expert by the softmax of the router projection over only the selected experts.
Router is a linear layer with bias (GptOssTopKRouter).
Gating function over expert logits (softmax, sigmoid).
- Load balancing
Not disclosed
Load-balancing method, with coefficients where disclosed.
- Renormalize top-k
Yes
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Mixture-of-Experts
weight the output of each expert by the softmax of the router projection over only the selected experts.
Softmax after top-k, so selected weights sum to 1.
Selected expert weights are renormalized to sum to 1.
- Expert dim / d_model
1
Calculated: moe.expert_dim / d_model
moe.expert_dim divided by shape.d_model.
- Sparsity (experts / top-k)
32
Calculated: experts / top_k
Routed experts divided by experts selected per token.
- Active / total
0.04391
Calculated: params.active / params.total
params.active divided by params.total.
Multi-token prediction
- MTP depth
Not disclosed
Additional future tokens predicted during pretraining (0 when the model was trained without MTP).
Normalization and stability
- Norm
RMSNorm
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2
applying root mean square normalization [6] on the activations before each attention and MoE block.
Normalization layer type in the blocks.
- Norm placement
pre
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2
Similar to GPT-2 we use Pre-LN placement
Pre-norm, post-norm, or sandwich (pre and post).
- Norm epsilon
1e-05
Source: config · /rms_norm_eps
Epsilon of the block normalization layers.
Context length
- Pretraining context
Not disclosed
Sequence length of the main pretraining stage.
- Trained context
Not disclosed
Longest sequence length trained on after context extension.
- Advertised context
131.1K tokens
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Attention
extend the context length of dense layers to 131,072 tokens using YaRN [15].
Equals config max_position_embeddings.
Longest context the publisher says the model supports, possibly beyond trained length via RoPE scaling.
- Extension method
YaRN on the dense layers to 131,072
Source: paper · PDF p.4 §2.2 Attention
extend the context length of dense layers to 131,072 tokens using YaRN [15].
Config rope_scaling: rope_type yarn, factor 32, original_max_position_embeddings 4096, beta_fast 32, beta_slow 1; HF code applies it to both layer types.
How context was extended (stages, RoPE base change, YaRN factor).
Pretraining recipe
- Pretraining tokens
Not disclosed
Tokens seen in pretraining including annealing and context extension, as reported.
- Optimizer
Not disclosed
Optimizer used for the bulk of parameters.
- Peak LR
Not disclosed
Peak learning rate of the main pretraining stage.
- Final LR
Not disclosed
Learning rate at the end of the decay.
- LR schedule
Not disclosed
Learning-rate schedule shape with phase boundaries.
- Warmup
Not disclosed
Warmup length in steps or tokens.
- Batch size
Not disclosed
Global batch size, including any batch-size ramp: sequences × sequence length (token total), or the token total alone when only that is stated.
- Weight decay
Not disclosed
Decoupled weight decay coefficient.
- Adam betas
Not disclosed
(beta1, beta2) of the Adam-family optimizer or its AdamW fallback.
- Grad clip
Not disclosed
Global gradient-norm clipping threshold.
- Training precision
Not disclosed
Matmul precision of pretraining (BF16, FP8 recipe, NVFP4 recipe) with the scaling granularity where disclosed. Never inferred from the released checkpoint dtype.
- Data mix
text-only, trillions of tokens; STEM, coding, general knowledge; CBRN-filtered with GPT-4o pretraining filters
Source: paper · PDF p.5 §2.4 Pretraining
We train the models on a text-only dataset with trillions of tokens, with a focus on STEM, coding, and general knowledge.
Next sentence: harmful content filtered by reusing the CBRN pre-training filters from GPT-4o.
Pretraining data composition as disclosed (domain shares, synthetic fraction, repetition).
- Data cutoff
June 2024
Source: paper · PDF p.5 §2.4 Pretraining
Our model has a knowledge cutoff of June 2024.
Pretraining data cutoff date.
- Hardware
NVIDIA H100
Source: paper · PDF p.5 §2.4 Pretraining
The gpt-oss models trained on NVIDIA H100 GPUs using the PyTorch framework
Accelerators used for pretraining, count and duration where stated.
- Accelerators
H100
Source: paper · PDF p.5 §2.4 Pretraining
The gpt-oss models trained on NVIDIA H100 GPUs using the PyTorch framework
Accelerator count and type for the main pretraining run, as the count with thousands separators and the chip's short name ("2,048 H800", "2,048 GH200"). A stated range or bound stays as stated ("2,048–4,096 GH200").
- Compute
2.1M H100-hours
Source: paper · PDF p.5 §2.4 Pretraining
The training run for gpt-oss-120b required 2.1 million H100-hours to complete
Stated under §2.4 Pretraining as "the training run"; whether post-training is included is not stated.
Pretraining compute as stated (GPU-hours or FLOPs).
KV cache
- KV bytes / token
36,900 bytes
Calculated: kv.bytes_at_context / 131072 tokens; uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry; SWA KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
Retained KV cache divided by context length, including bounded SWA caches and indexer keys. Exports use uniform BF16 at 131,072 tokens. The website can select uniform payload precision (no quantization overhead) or sourced component formats (including scales and documented padding). This is cache payload, not peak prefill memory or persistent prefix storage.
- Global KV bytes / token
36,864 bytes
Calculated: 36864 B / 1 tokens (Global KV); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry; SWA KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
Long-context global KV bytes per token, including indexer keys; excludes bounded SWA caches. Compression rates and cross-layer cache reuse are included. Exports use uniform BF16; the website's storage selector also applies here. This is the field to compare with global-KV figures in reports, using the matching storage recipe.
- KV bytes / token / B active
7,193 bytes
Calculated: kv.bytes_per_token (131072 tokens) / (params.active / 1e9); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry; SWA KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
kv.bytes_per_token divided by active parameters in billions (131,072 tokens in exports).
- KV at context / B active
942,798,596 bytes
Calculated: kv.bytes_at_context (131072 tokens) / (params.active / 1e9); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry; SWA KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
kv.bytes_at_context divided by active parameters in billions (131,072 tokens in exports).
- KV at context
4,836,556,800 bytes
Calculated: 36864 B × 131072 (Global KV) + 36864 B × min(131072, 128) (SWA KV); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry; SWA KV: 18 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
Retained KV cache for one sequence at the selected context, including SWA windows and indexer keys. Exports use uniform BF16 at 131,072 tokens. Excludes recurrent state, compressor tail state, draft/MTP caches, temporary prefill tensors, allocator metadata and persistent prefix snapshots. Does not estimate peak prefill or total serving memory.
Evaluations
- AA Intelligence Index
12
Source: leaderboard · Artificial Analysis model page /models/gpt-oss-120b, Wayback snapshot 2026-10-19
gpt-oss-120b (High) scores 12 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Variant: gpt-oss-120b (High). Index v4.3.2.
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3.2 of the post-trained model, from a dated Wayback snapshot of its Artificial Analysis page. The note names the variant (reasoning setting).