I have been having similar performance issues, I believe they intentionally made a worse model (Gemini 2.5) to get more money out of you. However, there is a way where you can make money off of Gemini 2.5.
If you set the thinking parameter lower and lower, you can make the model spew absolute nonsense for the first response. It costs 10 cents per input / output, and sometimes you get a response that was just so bad your clients will ask for more and more corrections.
If you set the thinking parameter lower and lower, you can make the model spew absolute nonsense for the first response. It costs 10 cents per input / output, and sometimes you get a response that was just so bad your clients will ask for more and more corrections.