The closest alternative to Gemini 2.5 Pro is Ling-2.6-1T — comparable intelligence (33.6 vs 34.6); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $1.25/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Ling-2.6-1T is the closest alternative to Gemini 2.5 Pro, with an Intelligence Index of 33.6 (Gemini 2.5 Pro scores 34.6) at $0.075 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $1.25 for Gemini 2.5 Pro, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Gemini 2.5 Pro — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.