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GPT-5 mini vs Gemini 2.5 Flash

Side-by-side pricing, capabilities, real-world cost across common scenarios, and our editorial pick.

Add a modelUp to 4 models can be compared
all prices in USD per 1M tokens
OVERALL WINNER

GPT-5 mini

OpenAI · released 2026-01-15

Quality (AA Index)84
Input price$0.25
Output price$2.00
Context400K
Throughput280 tok/s
P50 latency0.3s
View full pricing

Gemini 2.5 Flash

Google · released 2025-09-01

Quality (AA Index)78
Input price$0.30
Output price$2.50
Context1M
Throughput320 tok/s
P50 latency0.3s
View full pricing
Try GPT-5 mini on OpenRouterTry Gemini 2.5 Flash on OpenRouter

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Head-to-head specs

Green column = winner per metric
MetricGPT-5 miniGemini 2.5 FlashVerdict
Input price
/1M tokens
$0.25$0.30GPT-5 mini −17%
Output price
/1M tokens
$2.00$2.50GPT-5 mini −20%
Context window
max input length
400K1MGemini 2.5 Flash +2.5×
AA Quality
AA Intelligence Index (0–100)
8478GPT-5 mini +6pt
Arena Elo
LMArena human-pref Elo (800–2000)
——Tied
Throughput
tokens per second
280320Gemini 2.5 Flash +14%
P50 latency
first token
0.3s0.3sTied
Vision
multimodal
Tied
Function calling
tool use
Tied
Reasoning mode
chain-of-thought
Tied

Monthly cost across common scenarios

Default usage assumptions
ScenarioGPT-5 miniGemini 2.5 Flash
customer support
1000K req · 600/180 tok
$510$630
chat with docs
300K req · 4000/300 tok
$480$585
code generation
500K req · 2000/500 tok
$750$925
voice assistant
600K req · 800/200 tok
$360$444
Our pick

For most workloads, choose GPT-5 mini.

  • 17% cheaper input price, which compounds at scale

GPT-5 family inheritance at a fraction of the cost — strong on routine tasks but visibly weaker on multi-step reasoning. Default choice when GPT-5 is overkill.

Choose Gemini 2.5 Flash instead if: The price-performance benchmark for vision tasks. Strong multimodal, weak on deep reasoning. Pair as a fast first hop ahead of a smarter fallback.

Read our deep analysis

Why pick? Use both with smart routing

Phase 2 · gateway with fallback chain

Set GPT-5 mini as primary, Gemini 2.5 Flash as fallback. One key, one bill, automatic failover when GPT-5 mini errors.

PHASE 2 PREVIEW · gateway not live yetThis endpoint does not exist yet. The gateway is in Phase 2 — what you see below is a design preview of the planned interface, not a live API. We will email subscribers when it launches.
Preview the planned API call
$ curl https://api.aipricly.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPC_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "routing": {
      "primary": "openai/gpt-5-mini",
      "fallback": ["google/gemini-2-5-flash"]
    },
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "..."}]
  }'

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