DeepSeek R1 vs Gemini 2.5 Pro

Name: Gemini 2.5 Pro
Brand: Google Vertex AI
Price: 1.250000 USD

DeepSeek R1 vs Gemini 2.5 Pro: DeepSeek R1 is cheaper by 46% on average. DeepSeek R1 from Azure AI Foundry (128,000-token context, reasoning) vs. Gemini 2.5 Pro 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 R1Cheaper

Azure AI Foundry

$945/mo

Input $1.35/M · Output $5.40/M

Gemini 2.5 Pro

Google Vertex AI

$1,179/mo

Input $1.25/M · Output $10.00/M

At this workload, DeepSeek R1 is 20% cheaper than Gemini 2.5 Pro — a savings of $234/month ($2,812/year).

Crossover: Gemini 2.5 Pro is cheaper when output/input ≤ 0.02 (input-heavy workloads — RAG, retrieval). DeepSeek R1 wins above (long-form generation).

Current workload ratio: 0.13 (400/3000)

Production recipe — Agent Command Center

strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: deepseek-r1
  provider: azure-ai-foundry
fallback:
  model: gemini-2-5-pro
  provider: vertex-ai
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 Pro Google Vertex AI
Input price	$1.35/M	$1.25/M
Output price	$5.40/M	$10.00/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