Which Deep Research Web App should you be using?

The Only Two AI Research Tools Worth Paying For (And Why Everyone Gets This Wrong)

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Deep Research is one of the most impactful abilities in AI right now. An AIs ability to think through sources, pull new ones, fact-check information, and more is an absolute game-changer for productivity, especially when it comes to learning new ideas or monitoring existing trends.

Every major AI chatbot (including wrappers around others) now has a “Deep Research” mode. They all promise the same thing—multi-step web searches, hundreds of sources, analyst-grade reports. However, there are massive differences in the tools, stemming from differences in how the tools are built, their underlying tool use capabilities, and how they manage contexts.

Our lab tested all of the major across real use cases, spanning but not limited to—

1. Real research in deep fields (AI , law, finance, etc).

2. Fact-checking and critiquing in-depth reports

3. Code generation given a set of constraints, research, etc.

4. Forecasting trends

5. Answering complex questions (including ones that need multi-step reasoning, hinge on specific clauses etc) with minimal supervision

In this article, we will be sharing our findings, including our assessment of the top 5 chatbots we tested most thoroughly (+ validated through our channel and research partners). We’re not mentioning any out-of-touch benchmarks. There will be no affiliate links. Just a detailed analysis of the Deep Research tools, where they excel, and where they falter. Given how good a benchmark Deep Research is for a foundation model and its tool use abilities, this is not a comparison you want to miss, even if your work doesn’t involve heavy use of Deep Research.

Scope note: We’re evaluating the interface you actually use when you open a browser tab and need answers. Things like model APIs and other benefits of getting the subscription are not weighed strongly in this ranking, although they do play a role since DR is not a standalone purchase. Additionally, using Deep Research in APIs is a completely different set of considerations in terms of metrics, cost, stability, and vendors, so we will look through that later.

PS: If you need help with Legal Research, both Iqidis Core and Iqidis Researcher are available for free and give you top-tier legal research. Check them out if they interest you.

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