Gemini 2.5 Flash alternatives
Match · Updated July 2026
The closest alternative to Gemini 2.5 Flash is Ling-2.6-flash — comparable intelligence (14.1 vs 14.1); for a cheaper option, GPT-5.6 Luna runs $0.100/M vs $0.300/M; and the best open-weight substitute is Kimi K3.
Closest match
Cheaper alternatives
gpt-5.6-luna
$0.100/M input · 51.2 intel
minimax-m3:batch
$0.150/M input · 44.4 intel
hy3
$0.132/M input · 41.2 intel
nex-n2-pro
$0.250/M input · 41.0 intel
deepseek-v4-flash
$0.140/M input · 40.3 intel
gpt-5.4-nano
$0.200/M input · 38.2 intel
Smarter alternatives
qwen3-vl-235b-a22b-instruct
14.3 intel · $0.210/M
llama-4-maverick
14.3 intel · $0.200/M
mistral-medium-3.1
14.7 intel · $0.400/M
gpt-4.1-mini
14.8 intel · $0.400/M
nemotron-3-nano-omni-30b-a3b-reasoning:free
14.9 intel · Free/M
gpt-oss-20b
14.9 intel · $0.030/M
Open-source alternatives
kimi-k3
57.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
glm-5.2
51.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3
44.4 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3:batch
44.4 intel · open weights · 524K ctx
deepseek-v4-pro
44.3 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
kimi-k2.6
44.2 intel · open weights · 262K ctx
Frequently asked
What is the best alternative to Gemini 2.5 Flash?
Ling-2.6-flash is the closest alternative to Gemini 2.5 Flash, with an Intelligence Index of 14.1 (Gemini 2.5 Flash scores 14.1) at $0.010 per million input tokens.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Gemini 2.5 Flash?
Yes — GPT-5.6 Luna costs $0.100 per million input tokens versus $0.300 for Gemini 2.5 Flash, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
Is there an open-source alternative to Gemini 2.5 Flash?
Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Gemini 2.5 Flash — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 57.1 on intelligence.