Best free GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternatives

Looking for a free alternative to GPT-OSS (OpenAI)? Here are 9 notable open models worth trying — 9 with a free tier. GPT-OSS (OpenAI) itself is free.

ToolGPT-OSS (OpenAI) (you searched)Qwen (Alibaba)DeepSeek ModelsMistral Open Models (Magistral, Devstral, Voxtral)
Pricingfreefreefreefree
Best forOpenAI's Apache-2.0 open-weight reasoning models (120B and 20B)Open Qwen3.x family from phone-sized to multi-trillion-parameter MoE, Apache 2.0DeepSeek V4-Pro and V4-Flash open-weight MoE models, MIT-licensedOpen-weight Mistral Medium 3.5, Small 4 and Large 3 general models
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GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternatives — straight answers

What is the best free alternative to GPT-OSS (OpenAI)?

Qwen (Alibaba) is the closest free alternative to GPT-OSS (OpenAI): same Notable Open Models sub-category, and it is free. Open Qwen3.x family from phone-sized to multi-trillion-parameter MoE, Apache 2.0

Are there free GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternatives?

Yes — 9 of the 9 alternatives listed here are free or freemium: Qwen (Alibaba), DeepSeek Models, Mistral Open Models (Magistral, Devstral, Voxtral), OLMo (Ai2), Hunyuan (Tencent). None of them are paid-only.

Is GPT-OSS (OpenAI) free?

GPT-OSS (OpenAI) is free. There is no paid plan attached to it in the catalog.

How were these GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternatives chosen?

They are the other tools in Notable Open Models, then the rest of AI Models & Local Execution, ordered free tiers first and capped at 9. There is no sponsorship and no paid placement in that ordering — only the pricing tier decides.

All GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternatives

Browse Notable Open Models →

Qwen (Alibaba)

Notable Open Models
free

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — Open Qwen3.x family from phone-sized to multi-trillion-parameter MoE, Apache 2.0.

  • Open Qwen3.x family from phone-sized to multi-trillion-parameter MoE, Apache 2.0
  • Qwen3.6 mid-size models suit agentic coding on one high-memory machine
  • Small Qwen3.5 sizes run on phones and laptops
  • Free weights on Hugging Face and ModelScope
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DeepSeek Models

Notable Open Models
free

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — DeepSeek V4-Pro and V4-Flash open-weight MoE models, MIT-licensed.

  • DeepSeek V4-Pro and V4-Flash open-weight MoE models, MIT-licensed
  • Very long context with reasoning and non-reasoning modes
  • Successors to the V3 and R1 lines
  • Free weights plus free web chat
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free

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — Open-weight Mistral Medium 3.5, Small 4 and Large 3 general models.

  • Open-weight Mistral Medium 3.5, Small 4 and Large 3 general models
  • Devstral for coding agents and Magistral for visible reasoning
  • Voxtral open-weights speech models for transcription and voice agents
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OLMo (Ai2)

Notable Open Models
free

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — Only major model family shipping full pretraining data (Dolma), code and intermediate checkpoints, not just weights.

  • Only major model family shipping full pretraining data (Dolma), code and intermediate checkpoints, not just weights
  • Olmo 3 ships Base, Think, and Instruct variants at 7B/32B
  • OlmoCore training framework and Open Instruct pipeline are also open source
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Hunyuan (Tencent)

Notable Open Models
free

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — Open-weight Hunyuan Hy3 and Hy4-preview flagship text models.

  • Open-weight Hunyuan Hy3 and Hy4-preview flagship text models
  • Hunyuan3D line for fast image-to-3D generation
  • Hy-MT translation models covering dozens of language pairs
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Falcon (TII)

Notable Open Models
free

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — Falcon-H1 hybrid Transformer-Mamba family for efficient long-context inference.

  • Falcon-H1 hybrid Transformer-Mamba family for efficient long-context inference
  • Falcon-H1R small reasoning model with strong math results for its size
  • Free commercial use under TII's Falcon license
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MiniMax M2 (open weights)

Notable Open Models
free

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — MiniMax's open-weight M-series: M3 multimodal MoE with very long context, plus M2.x agentic-coding checkpoints.

  • MiniMax's open-weight M-series: M3 multimodal MoE with very long context, plus M2.x agentic-coding checkpoints
  • Distinct from MiniMax's Hailuo video product
  • Free weights on Hugging Face
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Xiaomi MiMo

Notable Open Models
freeNew

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — MiMo-V2.6-Pro (1T parameters) and V2.6-Flash (311B) open-weight reasoning and agent models.

  • MiMo-V2.6-Pro (1T parameters) and V2.6-Flash (311B) open-weight reasoning and agent models
  • Distilled MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B for single-GPU use
  • V2-Flash, V2.5 and V2.5-Pro checkpoints also published
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Step (StepFun)

Notable Open Models
freeNew

✦ WhyA GPT-OSS (OpenAI) alternative — Step-3.7-Flash open multimodal model with FP8, NVFP4 and GGUF builds.

  • Step-3.7-Flash open multimodal model with FP8, NVFP4 and GGUF builds
  • Step-3.5-Flash text model widely run locally
  • 51 open models incl. audio and image models
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GPT-OSS (OpenAI) head-to-head

GPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs Qwen (Alibaba)GPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs DeepSeek ModelsGPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs Mistral Open Models (Magistral, Devstral, Voxtral)GPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs OLMo (Ai2)GPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs Hunyuan (Tencent)GPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs Falcon (TII)GPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs MiniMax M2 (open weights)GPT-OSS (OpenAI) vs Xiaomi MiMo