Pick OpenAI Deep Research if
analysts and students who already pay for ChatGPT Plus or Pro and want a sourced memo.
Read the OpenAI Deep Research pageOpenAI Deep Research vs Perplexity
Our take
Pick OpenAI Deep Research if analysts and students who already pay for ChatGPT Plus or Pro and want a sourced memo. Pick Perplexity if researchers, analysts, and anyone who wants a sourced first pass before opening ten tabs. Skip Perplexity if teams that cannot send queries to Perplexity, or users who need a repo-aware IDE (Cursor) or a local runtime (Ollama).
Best for
OpenAI Deep Research A cited research memo from one prompt
Perplexity Research with sources you can click
Free plan
OpenAI Deep Research No free plan
Perplexity $0 · standard Search on the public composer
Lowest paid
OpenAI Deep Research Plus $20/mo, monthly only
Perplexity Pro $17/mo yearly
Next step up
OpenAI Deep Research Pro $100 / $200 / $500 per month
Perplexity Max from $167/mo yearly
Coding agent
OpenAI Deep Research
Perplexity API platform
Runs where
OpenAI Deep Research
Perplexity Hosted
Watch out
OpenAI Deep Research chatgpt.com/pricing HTML still hides $
Perplexity Citations are not a guarantee
Last checked
OpenAI Deep Research 2026-10-22 · help.openai.com
Perplexity 2026-10-19 · perplexity.ai/pro
Which one, then?
Pick Perplexity if
researchers, analysts, and anyone who wants a sourced first pass before opening ten tabs.
Read the Perplexity page