Since last year, major AI-powered chatbots have received “deep research” tools. This feature takes more time to respond to your prompts in order to offer an output in the form of a detailed report on a specific topic. ChatGPT received the feature last year, but it was limited to its most expensive paid tier. Now, OpenAI is offering its deep research tool to subscribers of more affordable plans.
If you’re not aware, previously only ChatGPT Pro plan subscribers could access the platform’s deep research feature. ChatGPT Pro costs a whopping $200 per month, so the entry barrier to the tool was quite high for most people. Meanwhile, other paid tiers offered advanced features but lacked deep research capabilities.
OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT’s deep research to subscribers of more affordable plans
Now, OpenAI has announced that subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, Team, Edu, and Enterprise plans can use the deep research option. However, there is a limit of 10 deep research queries per month. Meanwhile, the limit of 100 queries per month for ChatGPT Pro subscribers goes up to 120.
Using the tool requires a lot of processing power. When enabled for a particular query, it can take about 20 minutes to “research” the web, process all the information, and deliver it to you in the form of a white paper-like report. This is quite useful for researchers and students, but also for anyone who wants to know everything they need to delve into a new topic, for example.
OpenAI’s post on X/Twitter mentions a couple of key improvements that its deep research tool has received. The company claims that reports can now include images with citations. Plus, the feature is “better at understanding and referencing uploaded files.” Remember that you can complement your text prompt with files, documents, or multimedia.
OpenAI’s move seems to be a response to the strong competition in the segment. Recently, Google rolled out its deep research tool to the Gemini app for Gemini Advanced subscribers. Elon Musk’s xAI also integrated the feature into Grok 3 for free during the beta period. Similarly, Perplexity launched its own deep research feature with free access—5 queries per day for free users.
