Questions & answers

A deep research AI takes a broad question, plans a set of sub-questions, searches the web and data sources for each one, and writes a long report with citations. It is built for market, industry and company research, where a single search is not enough. Expect the work to take minutes rather than seconds, and check the report against its sources before you rely on it.

A normal chatbot answer relies mostly on what the model learned, plus a few searches. A deep research agent runs many rounds of search, reads the pages, and keeps going until each part of the question has evidence. The output is longer and slower, and it should cite the pages it used. The trade-off is time and cost, so use it where depth matters.

Hyperresearch is our editorial pick for accuracy. In our October 2026 DRACO run it scored 77.7, the highest in the table, and it checks every cited figure against its source before a report ships. Claude Research scored 73.0 in the same run, which makes it the runner-up. Because that run used only 10 tasks, confirm the fit with a pilot on your own question.

Hyperresearch offers the first Deep report free, which is the easiest way to test a full run. Gemini Deep Research and ChatGPT deep research also offer access, but their limits depend on the plan and change over time. Read each vendor's help page for current limits before you choose. We do not state prices for other tools here, because they change often.

Not in the scored table. The October 2026 DRACO run in our table covers eight tools, and it has no score for Grok DeepSearch, Manus or Kimi Researcher. We make no claim about how those tools rank. If you need one of them, run it on your own task with the same brief you use for the other tools.

DeepResearch Bench is a benchmark of 100 PhD-level research tasks across 22 fields, split evenly between Chinese and English. It grades reports with RACE, which covers comprehensiveness, depth, instruction-following and readability. It grades citations with FACT. The maintainers have since changed their judge model, so older RACE scores may not match newer ones.

No. BrowseComp is a search test. OpenAI released it in April 2025 with 1,266 questions whose answers are short and easy to grade. A high score shows that an agent can keep searching for hard facts. It does not show that the agent writes a clear, complete report, so use DRACO or a pilot to judge that.

Start with the five figures that matter most to your decision. Open each cited source and confirm that the number, date and scope match the claim. Where the claim needs one, check that the source is primary, such as an SEC filing. Then note the claims that fail. A tool that checks figures before delivery reduces this work, but it does not remove the need for a reader.

Not on its own. A deep research AI can do the first pass on sources, draft a structure, and surface figures for review. An analyst still has to judge which sources matter, decide what the findings mean, and stand behind the conclusion. Treat the report as a draft that saves hours of reading, and keep a person in charge of the conclusion.

It depends on the vendor and the plan. Read the data policy before you upload anything sensitive. Check whether your inputs are used for training, how long they are kept, and whether you can opt out. Policies change, so check the current terms on the vendor site rather than an old review. For confidential work, ask whether a business plan has stronger terms.

Scores move for several reasons: the tasks, the judge model, the date of the run, the model versions, and the settings. A small task set can also swing by several points when one task changes. That is why the 100-task DRACO paper and our 10-task run show different scores for some tools. Compare scores only when the method matches.

Pick three questions you actually need answered: one simple, one broad, and one that needs a niche or paywalled source. Run each tool with the same brief, and time each run. Score each report on whether its cited figures hold up, whether it covers your criteria, and whether you would send it to a client. Use those scores to choose, not the leaderboard alone.