OpenAI’s Free and Powerful Models: What Everyone Should Know

What Has OpenAI Done?

OpenAI has made two smart AI models available to everyone—without keeping them locked up. You can use them freely and even change them if you want.

There are two versions:

gpt‑oss‑120B: A big model that runs well on a powerful graphics card called H100—great for tough tasks that need deep thinking. It has 117 billion parts, but only about 5 billion are “active” at a time inside the chip.
gpt‑oss‑20B: A smaller, faster version you can use on less powerful machines—its “active” parts are about 3.6 billion.

Totally free to build with: They come with a permit (Apache 2.0 license) that lets you do almost anything—even commercial use—without worrying about legal trouble.
Flexible thinking power: You can choose how hard the model thinks—low, medium, or high—so you can balance speed and smarts.
Shows how it thinks: You can actually see the model’s “chain of thought.” This helps you understand or debug what it’s doing—though it’s mainly for developers, not end users.
You can teach it more: The models let you fine-tune them, meaning you can train them further for your own tasks.
Smart tools built-in: They can do things like call functions, browse the web, write Python code, or format their answers in neat ways.
Works efficiently: They’re built with new tech (MXFP4 precision), so the big model still fits on one H100 GPU, and the smaller one uses only 16 GB RAM.

Build your own AI helper: Since these models are free and open, anyone—student, hobbyist, or business—can adapt them to solve real problems without paying for a pricey API.
Safe and trustworthy: You can watch how the model makes decisions, helping you understand and control its behavior.
Runs locally or in the cloud: You decide where to use it—on your own computer, a server, or in the cloud—based on what you like or need.
Plays nice with other tools: These models can link up with your programs or web searches, making them handy helpers inside bigger systems.