ChatGPT Finally Has a Free (but Limited) Deep Research Tool
Months after enabling Deep Research in its pricey $200 ChatGPT Pro plan , OpenAI is now making the feature available to all users. Now everyone can access the lite version of Deep Research for free.
This new version of Deep Research falls somewhere between ChatGPT’s regular search and ChatGPT Pro’s style of detailed reporting. This search usually takes five to ten minutes and gives you a report that is one or two pages long. In my experience, his reports are practical, accurate and well researched.
How the new “lightweight” ChatGPT Deep Research works
Deep Research is different from regular ChatGPT search. Here ChatGPT will use all its resources such as reasoning model, reasoning abilities, online search integration and combine all of them to create a detailed answer.
Deep Research will first ask you a few follow-up questions about your tip and then begin its work. A single Deep Research request can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, depending on the complexity of the question you are asking. The full version of the Deep Research tool can perform complex and detailed investigations of complex scientific and mathematical problems for you. These queries typically take about 30 minutes to complete and generate detailed, multi-page reports.
The new lightweight version is more casual. You can use it to research stocks you want to invest in, products you want to buy, or gain insight into a new topic. Results take five to ten minutes, and reports are shorter and to the point. But they will still have a large number of sources, so you may want to check the links to make sure ChatGPT isn’t hallucinating.
But while it’s technically available to everyone, access to ChatGPT Deep Research is quite limited and depends on the plan you’re using.
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Free Plan : You’ll receive five lightweight Deep Research queries per month.
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Plus and Group Plans : The $20 per month plan gives you ten queries per month using the full Deep Research tool and another 15 using the lite version.
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Pros : The $200/month plan includes 125 full Deep Research queries per month and another 125 with the lite version.
All limits reset every 30 days and start the day you start using the Deep Dive feature.
How to use Deep Research in ChatGPT
Once you open the ChatGPT website, click the “Deep Explore” button and enter your invitation. The more details you provide, the better off you will be. To add more context, you can attach images, documents, or tables.
After you enter the invitation, ChatGPT will return to you with follow-up questions. Answers to these questions are optional, but they will help flesh out your report. If you want a more general report, you can simply say something like “I don’t know, do your best” and ChatGPT will start working with what it thinks is the best way forward.
When the research starts, you will see a progress bar in the chat itself. You may want to leave the chat and come back later as this will take time. In my testing using the lite free version, queries still took four to eight minutes, even for simple questions.
You can click on the progress bar to open the sidebar. Here you will see the steps ChatGPT takes to respond to your request. Depending on your question, ChatGPT can look at scientific articles, PDFs, websites, and then use its thinking model when all the information is collated.
Once the report is ready, you will see it in a separate special window. You can click the Share button to open the preview window. Here you can click “Share Link” to create a link to the report. However, unlike Google Gemini, you cannot export the report to PDF (or other format).
How ChatGPT Deep Research can help you
I ran a couple of tests with the Deep Research tool on the free plan and was impressed. ChatGPT reports are short and clear. Google’s Gemini reports seem overly wordy by comparison. ChatGPT is also better at highlighting links directly in the text, while Gemini hides them behind a menu.
I asked ChatGPT to create a beginner’s guide to learning handpans , and it did a good job of collecting YouTube videos, handpan vendors, and exercises on one page. I then asked him to research market sentiment for a specific stock , and this included everything from recent earnings to expert opinions and stock price targets.
I then used it for something that a standard Google search couldn’t help me with, which was to find the part number for the spare tire hook for my Volkswagen Polo . Not wanting to open the user manual or go to the dealer, I turned to ChatGPT for help instead.
First, I used the regular search function, but it just didn’t give me a useful answer. However, the Deep Research function found the part number in a couple of minutes. But he couldn’t find a website in India (where I am) that sells this part (although he found many sellers in the US and Europe).
For comparison, I ran a query in Gemini. Gemini produced a very long report, much of which was unhelpful. I had to scroll to the bottom to find the part number. However, Google gave me a link to an Indian site that sells this part. Good.
Overall, I found the Deep Research ChatGPT tool to be comparable to and superior to tools like Gemini and Perplexity when it comes to direct communication and sourcing.
However, the content is still generated using a large language model that tends to be hallucinatory and fictitious. It is best to check the report sources to ensure that the results generated by ChatGPT are correct.