Is Gemini 2.5 Pro a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Gemini 2.5 Pro on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 144 · Oct 16, 2026
As of Oct 16, 2026, Gemini 2.5 Pro is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Gemini 3.8 Flash scores 41.0 higher and costs 13% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 144 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
Gemini 3.8 Flash is both better and cheaper than Gemini 2.5 Pro: 41.0 points higher on LMArena and 13% less per million tokens, $0.438 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1457.7
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$3.44/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1498.7
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$3.00/M
Gemini 2.5 Pro takes text, image, file, audio, video, returns up to 65,536 tokens from a 1,048,576-token context, and is listed by 7 sellers.
Compared against 144 rated, priced models on this lens: 7 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Gemini 2.5 Pro scores 1457.7 at $3.44 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1498.7 +41.0 | $3.00/M | 13% |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | 1489.8 +32.1 | $2.00/M | 42% |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1487.1 +29.4 | $3.00/M | 13% |
| Muse Spark 1.2 | 1484.9 +27.2 | $2.00/M | 42% |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1479.5 +21.8 | $1.50/M | 56% |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 1478.1 +20.4 | $2.00/M | 42% |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1477.6 +19.9 | $3.38/M | 2% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1490.3 | $0.540/M | file |
| Kimi K3 | 1475.6 | $3.05/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 13, 2026 | file, audio |
| GLM 5.3 | 1471.4 | $1.00/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026 | image, file, audio, video |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.0 | $0.238/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026 | file, audio |
| GLM 5.2 | 1470.0 | $1.12/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026 | image, file, audio, video |
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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
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