Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

gpt-oss-20b vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

gpt-oss-20b scores 69.9 (B) on agent readiness against MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B's 61 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

gpt-oss-20b B

Best for Local agents on a 24 GB GPU or Mac that want a permissive licence, wide runtime support and documented structured output, one tool call at a time

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 70
  • Risk, 85 against 60
  • Agent interface, 90 against 70

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

No reply from OpenAI to any discussion since August 2025, and template reports wait unanswered

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B C

Best for Researchers and agents that want a small coding and terminal-agent model to fine-tune further, on a 24 GB GPU or larger.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

Only BF16 from Xiaomi, about 23 GB to run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this rungpt-oss-20bMiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259070gpt-oss-20b +20
Risk20%208560gpt-oss-20b +25
Agent interface10%109070gpt-oss-20b +20
Documentation and upkeep10%104240gpt-oss-20b +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 69.9/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

Factgpt-oss-20bMiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorOpenAIXiaomi (MiMo team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT (metadata only, no LICENSE file); built on Qwen3.5-9B under Apache 2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-08-262026-09-21
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews3.5/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

gpt-oss-20b

gpt-oss-20b is a cousin for reasoning, coding and single tool calls with structured output, under plain Apache 2.0. It needs about 17 GB with a working context, and five inference providers serve it. The main risks are that it trails o4-mini at keeping system instructions above user ones, and OpenAI hasn't answered a report since August 2025.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

A 9B cousin tuned on MiMo-V2.6's agent work for coding, terminal tasks and visual coding, released as a base for RL research. It needs about 23 GB in BF16, since Xiaomi ships no smaller build. The main risks are no safety results while a seventh of its tuning is offensive security, and nobody at Xiaomi answering reports.

Before you call either

gpt-oss-20b

  1. Start it with ollama run gpt-oss:20b (the build that fits the reference machine), or vllm serve openai/gpt-oss-20b with a current vLLM release rather than the card's pinned vllm==0.10.1+gptoss wheel
  2. Use the harmony format through the chat template or openai-harmony; OpenAI says the model doesn't work correctly without it
  3. Parse tool calls and reasoning with openai-harmony; calls come on the commentary channel ending in <|call|>, reasoning on the analysis channel
  4. Set effort with Reasoning: high (or low, medium) in the system message, or reasoning_effort in the template; medium is the default
  5. Ask for JSON by putting a JSON Schema under # Response Formats in the developer message
  6. Drop earlier reasoning after a final answer but pass it back after tool calls, and don't show the analysis channel to users
  7. Expect one tool call per turn; run several in sequence rather than in parallel

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

  1. Serve it as the card does, sglang serve --model-path XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B --reasoning-parser mimo, and add --tool-call-parser mimo for parsed tool calls
  2. SGLang's mimo reasoning parser expects thinking to be asked for, so pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true, as the card does, and read reasoning_content
  3. Calls come back as function and parameter blocks inside tool_call, the same shape vLLM's and SGLang's qwen3_coder parsers read
  4. The generation config samples at temperature 0.6, top_k 20 and top_p 0.95
  5. Images and video go in through Qwen3.5's processor; the template's audio tokens have no audio encoder behind them
  6. The MTP head isn't in the files, so skip MTP speculative decoding even though config.json lists a layer
  7. It's an SFT checkpoint meant for further RL, and discussions report runaway generation on llama.cpp, so cap max_tokens

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, gpt-oss-20b or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B?

gpt-oss-20b scores 69.9 (B) on agent readiness against MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B's 61 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with gpt-oss-20b or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

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