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OpenAI’s Deep Research costs $200 per month, while Google Gemini’s agent is much cheaper – $20. Perplexity, in turn, now offers a similar Deep Research AI agent for free.
Sounds tempting, right? Let’s explore Perplexity Deep Research and its key capabilities, limitations, initial reviews, and future prospects.
Key Takeaways
- Perplexity launched a free Deep Research AI agent, competing with OpenAI and Google Gemini.
- It offers expert-level analysis across finance, marketing, and technology.
- Free users get five queries daily, while Pro subscribers get 500 queries for $20 per month.
- Perplexity Deep Research processes queries in 2-4 minutes — faster than competitors.
- While praised for affordability and speed, some users report hallucinations and inaccuracies.
- Show Full Guide
What Is Perplexity Deep Research?
“We believe everyone deserves powerful research tools,” said Perplexity on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2025, as it launched a new Deep Research agent.
Like rival products from OpenAI and Google, Perplexity’s Deep Research can conduct expert-level analysis across complex subject matters.
According to Perplexity developers, the tool excels at:
- Creating work artifacts in domains including finance, marketing, and technology
- Can work as a personal consultant in areas such as health, product research, and travel planning
Introducing Deep Research on Perplexity.
Deep Research lets you generate in-depth research reports on any topic.
Available to everyone for free—up to 5 queries per day for non-subscribers and 500 queries per day for Pro users. pic.twitter.com/obovx7YEUF
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) February 14, 2025
Is Perplexity Deep Research Free?
Yes. Non-subscribers get up to 5 queries per day.
Although such a limited number of answers per day can seem insufficient for work-related matters, you can try using Deep Research for free and assess its capabilities.
Meanwhile, Pro subscribers get 500 queries per day, which is basically unlimited access.
For reference, Perplexity Pro costs $20 per month, which is still lower than ChatGPT Pro’s $200 but in line with Google Gemini’s $20.
How Can I Try Perplexity’s Deep Research?
Go to perplexity.ai, select “Deep Research,” and submit your query.
The web version of Perplexity Deep Research has been available since its launch. The company also promised to launch the tool for its iOS, Android, and Mac apps soon.
How Long Does Perplexity Deep Research Take?
2-4 minutes
Perplexity claims to be faster than its competitors. According to the developers, the reasoning tool will take just 2-4 minutes to do the work that would take an expert many hours to perform.
Meanwhile, Google Gemini’s version of a Deep Research agent might process your query for around 15 minutes, and ChatGPT’s agent will take 5–30 minutes per query, depending on its complexity.
What Makes Perplexity’s Deep Research Special?
Perplexity Deep Research aims to save hours of your time by performing in-depth analysis and research on your request.
In just under three minutes, it conducts dozens of searches through hundreds of sources and uses reasoning to give you a comprehensive report.
The process is similar to how a human might research a new topic, learn new areas, and refine the initial plan on the go. Once Deep Research has successfully evaluated all the necessary materials, it generates a comprehensive report. You can export it to PDF and share it with colleagues and friends.
Impressive Score at Humanity’s Last Exam
Perplexity’s Deep Research attained a 21.1% accuracy score at Humanity’s Last Exam, significantly outperforming o3-mini, DeepSeek-R1, and Gemini Thinking.
The agent was second only to OpenAI’s Deep Research, which kept its record score of 26.6%.
Humanity’s Last Exam is a benchmark for AI systems’ accuracy. It consists of more than 3,000 questions across 100+ subjects, including science, mathematics, literature, and history.
Will Perplexity Outperform Its Rivals, or Is It Late in the Research Game?
If we briefly examine the existing Deep Research agents from the top AI companies, the picture looks quite similar.
So, will Perplexity manage to gain more users’ attention by offering its Deep Research agent for free?
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, is positive about its future, highlighting that the number of Deep Research users grows daily.
Number of daily PDF exports of Perplexity Deep Research answers is growing! Just share and send folks and grow the knowledge in the universe! Well look into supporting more formats shortly: pptx included.
— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) February 17, 2025
| Feature | Perplexity Deep Research | OpenAI Deep Research | Gemini Deep Research |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI model | Custom AI model with iterative search & reasoning | o3 (optimized for browsing & analysis) | Gemini 2.0 |
| Autonomous research | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Input types | Text, images, PDFs, spreadsheets | Text, images, PDFs, spreadsheets | Primarily text |
| Output | Reports with sources, summaries, and export options | Reports with sources, summaries, and embedded visuals | Reports with key findings & links |
| Transparency | Refines research plan iteratively, shows reasoning process | Shows its reasoning process step-by-step | Pre-planned research path that users can modify |
| Processing time | 2–4 minutes per query | 5–30 minutes per query | Varies, but usually under 15 minutes |
| Price | Free (limited queries); Unlimited for Pro subscribers ($20/month) | $200/month (100 queries) | $20/month (Gemini Advanced) |
| Best for | Finance, marketing, technology professionals, casual researchers | Professionals in finance, policy, academia | Students, entrepreneurs, casual researchers |
Comparing Perplexity’s Deep Research to OpenAI’s offering, Srinivas highlighted its “fair” subscription price.
500 queries a day vs 100 queries a month
$20/mo vs $200/mo
App layer is the most interesting place to be since you can purely focus on satisfying your user and do what’s right for them which means having a fair subscription price and being efficient about the architecture— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) February 15, 2025
Srinivas added:
“User speaks the truth. Perplexity is 9x faster, 1.5x more sources, and 5x more concise. And also free instead of $200/mo.”
However, not everyone is convinced about Peroplesity’s capabilities so far. David Finsterwalder, Founder of noelith.ai, said on X:
“I have to test more, but from what I see so far, I stick with paying 200$ for 100 queries a month for OpenAI Deep Research. Unfortunately, cheaper is not always better.”
Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said Perplexity’s Deep Research “is not even close” to OpenAI’s research agent for now.
I’ve used both and OpenAI’s Deep Research is a lot better than Perplexity’s. Not even close in the queries I have done. https://t.co/DLhhwvq1sq
— Patrick Moorhead (@PatrickMoorhead) February 17, 2025
Derya Unutmaz, MD, a Professor, biomedical scientist, and human immunologist at the Jackson Laboratory, echoes this view, urging users not to “buy into the Perplexity hype,” which “isn’t even a competition for ODR [OpenAI Deep Research],” for scientific research.
To compare Perplexity Deep Research (PDR) with OpenAI Deep Research (ODR), I uploaded dozens of genes that we had identified as differentially expressed in certain immune cell subtypes & then used the prompt below. ODR provided 15 pages of incredibly insightful analysis that blew…
— Derya Unutmaz, MD (@DeryaTR_) February 16, 2025
However, for a bunch of skeptical reviews, there are many positive ones.
Aishwarya Srinivasan, Head of AI Developer Relations-Growth at Fireworks AI, canceled her ChatGPT Pro subscription after using Perplexity’s Deep Research. She said:
“I had been using ChatGPT Deep Research for building in-depth reports to explore and learn new topics – I loved the product! But now, I guess with Perplexity Deep Search I can keep all my search & research needs in one place! Perplexity has done phenomenal work to integrate Deep Research to their product and run it 9x times faster while 10x cheaper.”
Limitations & Challenges
Similar to other AI products, Perplexity Deep Research is not immune to some common issues, including hallucinations and citation inaccuracies.
Jordan Wilson, Founder of Everyday AI Podcast, called Perplexity’s Deep Research “pretty bad.” He said, referring to the tool:
“More hallucinations than any other Deep Research tool I’ve used.”
Alex McFarland, AI Journalist and Founder of AI Disruptor, noted that Perpolexity’s new product feels unfinished. He said:
“It’s starting to look like these companies are really rushing out unfinished products to compete. Perplexity has been disappointing me a bit. This new tool is not even on par with Google Gemini’s deep research. It has its place, but do not listen to the people saying it’s just as good as ChatGPT or even Gemini.”
However, Aravind Srinivas rushed in, saying they’re addressing all the issues at the moment, and expressed gratitude to the people who flagged the issues:
The inaccuracy in financial queries on Perplexity Deep Research is being addressed. Examples of current failures include using old bitcoin prices or old market caps of the companies for a task like make me an investment case for Palantir or Bitcoin. We’re fixing this. For finance…
— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) February 17, 2025
Does Perplexity’s Future Look Bright?
Free Deep Research agents like Perplexity could be another example of a paradigm shift towards AI for all.
Ethan Song, Founder of Stealth, said that the new Deep Research feature can “kill” analytical think tanks like McKinsey & Company. He said:
“I still remember my early 20s as a Deloitte analyst, sifting through so-called ‘proprietary information’ that was in fact Gartner reports that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars… Then turning it into slides and billing $400 an hour for it. Those days are long gone. Now that all of human knowledge is instantly accessible and easy to digest.”
Perplexity’s Srinivas believes that open-source could be the future of AI development, and the free Deep Research feature is the result of this view.
Thankful for open source! We’re going to keep making this faster and cheaper. Knowledge should be universally accessible and useful. Not kept behind obscenely expensive subscription plans that benefit the corporates, but not in the interests of humanity! https://t.co/mtG4oZhl4z pic.twitter.com/M1yHtXJKUe
— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) February 14, 2025
The Bottom Line
While some users praise Perplexity for promoting cheap AI research capabilities for all, others call the tool not worthy.
It’s up to you to decide whether you can replace the costly Deep Research agent from OpenAI with Perplexity’s counterpart. At least, you have five free attempts a day to decide.
FAQs
Is Perplexity AI good for research?
Does Perplexity have a daily limit?
Is Perplexity safe to use?
Can Perplexity AI generate images?
Who is behind Perplexity AI?
References
- Introducing Perplexity Deep Research (Perplexity)
- Humanity’s Last Exam (LastExam)
- Aravind Srinivas on X (X)
- David Finsterwalder on X (X)
- Aishwarya Srinivasan on LinkedIn (LinkedIn)
- Jordan Talks Everyday AI on X (X)
- Perplexity’s Deep Research isn’t for serious work (AI Disruptor)
- Ethan Song on LinkedIn (LinkedIn)
