DeepSeek R1 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash

Name: Gemini 2.5 Flash
Brand: Google Vertex AI
Price: 0.300000 USD

DeepSeek R1 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash: Gemini 2.5 Flash is cheaper by 78% on average. DeepSeek R1 from Azure AI Foundry (128,000-token context, reasoning) vs. Gemini 2.5 Flash from Google Vertex AI (1,048,576-token context, reasoning, tool calls). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.

Side-by-side cost

Live workload comparison

Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.

Input tokens / request3,000

01,048,576

Output tokens / request400

065,535

Requests / day5,000

01,000,000

DeepSeek R1

Azure AI Foundry

$945/mo

Input $1.35/M · Output $5.40/M

Gemini 2.5 FlashCheaper

Google Vertex AI

$289/mo

Input $0.300/M · Output $2.50/M

At this workload, Gemini 2.5 Flash is 69% cheaper than DeepSeek R1 — a savings of $656/month ($7,871/year).

Production recipe — Agent Command Center

strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: gemini-2-5-flash
  provider: vertex-ai
fallback:
  model: deepseek-r1
  provider: azure-ai-foundry
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live

Get started free →Routing docs ↗

	DeepSeek R1 Azure AI Foundry	Gemini 2.5 Flash Google Vertex AI
Input price	$1.35/M	$0.300/M
Output price	$5.40/M	$2.50/M
Context window	128,000	1,048,576
Max output	8,192	65,535
Function calling	—	✓
Vision	—	✓
Audio input	—	—
Reasoning	✓	✓
Prompt caching	—	✓
Structured output	—	✓
Pricing verified	May 12, 2026	May 12, 2026