Developers Beg Google to Keep Gemini 2.5 Flash Alive
Don't discontinue Gemini 2.5 Flash
I am urging the Google team not to discontinue Gemini 2.5 Flash because our internal benchmarks show it outperforms newer models like Gemini 3 Flash in both speed and quality. For critical applications like voice agents in Australia, the low latency of 2.5 Flash is unmatched, and switching to alternatives would break our workflows. We need this specific model to remain available for much longer to support our essential use cases.
Retiring 2.5 Flash will be such a massive loss. It's the only low latency model that is deployed in Australia.
- segmondy
This is the problem with cloud models, you build a "predictable" workflow then they remove it with a new and improved one that is less deterministic and often costs more. If you use a local model discontinuation is no longer a thing to worry about.
- tylertreat
I am more concerned about the cost step up from Gemini 2.5 Flash to 3.5 Flash, with the latter being roughly 3x more expensive. I thought the intention of the Flash models was to be relatively low-latency and more affordable compared to Pro, but the newer Flash models aren’t being priced as such. Then again, the era of cheap and plentiful AI might be coming to an end…
- whycombinetor
I feel this way about gpt-5-nano (EOL December 2026). It seems like the open weight models have progressed a long way since these old models were released though. Deepseek V4 Flash is even cheaper than gpt-5-nano. I'm still going to pay a cloud provider to run it for me, I'm not local inference pilled yet, but I _can_ run it myself in the future if worse comes to worst.
Objectively testable evals are one thing, but how does one judge whether a new model is adequately reproducing the subjective "writing style" of an old model that you've gotten accustomed to the feel of?
- mips_avatar
It's such a good model for the price, for a lot of tasks it outperforms gpt5 at 3x the speed and 1/5 the price. The price jump from 2.5->3->3.5 has been so high.
- hrpnk
I love how there is a "Please do not discontinue gemini-2.0-flash[-lite], 2.5 is NOT an equivalent" from Feb 20th. Getting too attached to models is a smell.