ChatGPT Deep Research
An agentic mode that browses for many minutes and returns a cited report.
Full ChatGPT Deep Research record →Head to head
ChatGPT Deep Research vs Exa
ChatGPT Deep Research (OpenAI) and Exa (Exa) both sit in Search & Research. Exa is the cheaper entry point at Free tier includes $10/mo in credits. Pay-as-you-go thereafter (e.g. Search at $7/1k requests, Contents at $1/1k pages).. ChatGPT Deep Research shipped more tracked changes in the last 30 days (4 vs 2). Every value below comes from the latest crawl of the vendors' own pages.
| Attribute | ChatGPT Deep Research OpenAI | Exa Exa |
|---|---|---|
| Segment | Search & Research | Search & Research |
| Version | gpt-6-astra | Exa Agent |
| Entry cost | from $20/mo | Free tier includes $10/mo in credits. Pay-as-you-go thereafter (e.g. Search at $7/1k requests, Contents at $1/1k pages). |
| Pricing tiers | Free free · Plus $20 · Pro $200 | Starter free · Developer free |
| Model stack | GPT-5.2 Thinking · gpt-5.6 · gpt-6-astra · o3 (optimized version) · o4-mini (lightweight version) | agentic models · embedding · Exa Agent API · Exa Auto · Exa Custom Search Models · Exa Search API · Exa Search Embedding Model · Exa Search Model · Exa Search Models · Exa Search Neural Model |
| Context window | 196K tokens | n/a |
| Public API | ||
| Routes models | ||
| Changes / 30d | 4 | 2 |
| Origin | Global | Global |
| Capabilities | Multi-step browsing, Cited reports, Python analysis, File and image reading, Deep research, Specialized models, Web search, Agents | Neural search, Contents retrieval, Websets, Answer endpoint, Research API, Web Search API, Deep Research, Structured JSON Extraction |
Exa
Embeddings-based web search designed to feed retrieval pipelines and agents.
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