Google Claims Its New Gemini AI Is Smarter and Cheaper Than OpenAI’s Best

On April 4, Google made its most powerful AI model yet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, available to software developers. The new model outperforms offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic across several benchmarks while being cheaper to use. Google first revealed Gemini 2.5 Pro in late March, the first in a line of Gemini 2.5 models. You can expect other models in the 2.5 line to have names that denote their price and capabilities, similar to Gemini 2.0 Flash, a lower-cost model revealed in February. All models in the 2.5 line will be thinking models, meaning they can reason through the best way to answer a question by using an internal dialogue. Gemini 2.5 Pro was initially only available on the Gemini app and website, but is now available for commercial use through an API. According to Google, Gemini 2.5 Pro exhibits high levels of capability in math and science. The model outperformed OpenAI’s, Anthropic’s, xAI’s, and DeepSeek’s latest models in benchmarks that test high-level science and math. And in a benchmark meant to test the model’s agentic coding skills, Gemini 2.5 Pro came in second, behind only Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet. In brief, 2.5 Pro seems to be a whiz at those subjects. In a blog post announcing Gemini 2.5 Pro’s API debut, Google senior product manager Logan Kilpatrick wrote that the model had been “priced competitively.” Like most other AI APIs, developers will need to pay a fee to Google every time the model processes a new input and creates a new output. This is done through a process called “tokenization,” in which input data is broken up into a series of “tokens,” to be processed by the model. The number of tokens in an input/output determines the size of the API fee. Essentially, more data means more tokens, which means more money. Google lists the precise pricing scheme in the blog post. Developers can also “ground” Gemini 2.5 Pro’s outputs with Google search, enabling the model to access information from across the internet, instead of being restricted to its training data. They’ll get 1,500 free searches every day, but will have to pay $35 for every thousand searches after that. How does all this compare with the competition? OpenAI’s current flagship model, GPT-4.5, is much more expensive. Gemini 2.5 Pro is also slightly cheaper than GPT-4o, OpenAI’s most popular model. And Gemini 2.5 Pro is cheaper than Anthropic’s latest model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Ultimately, if you’re building an AI agent that needs to be able to quickly and efficiently search through the internet, like an assistant for buying plane tickets, Gemini 2.5 Pro’s capabilities and integration with Google could make it an attractive option. And if you just want to explore Google’s AI offerings in general, downloading the Gemini app will let you chat with Gemini for free. BY BEN SHERRY @BENLUCASSHERRY