· Quick Take · 2 min read
Which Deep Research Is Best? ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini
After a year with Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT deep research, ChatGPT consistently yields the most thoughtful and useful reports.
You probably already know about Deep research mode in popular AI assistants. You give it a question, it reads a lot of the web, then it writes a report with citations. People usually use it for technical overviews, industry and trend analysis, and fact-finding. Three popular options today are Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. Here are my opinions after using all three for a year.
- Reads about 500 sources. Runs in about 10 minutes
- Usually returns a 5-page report, too short for deep work
- Feels like an unconnected list of 1-sentence summaries, dry and hollow
- Also reads about 500 sources. Runs in about 10 minutes
- Usually returns around 30 pages, very consistent
- Deeper and more comprehensive than Claude
- Corporate vibe with big words and jargon from the first line
- Rigid structure. It starts with an overview, then dives into planned subtopics
- Comprehensive but not thoughtful. Same depth across subtopics
- Reads fewer than 100 sources. Runs in about 10 minutes
- Length varies, from 10 to even 100 pages, average around 20
- Intelligent, thoughtful, mostly comprehensive. Digs where it matters and skims where it does not. But the quality is not always consistent
ChatGPT wins decisively over the other two. Reading ChatGPT Deep Research gives me the feeling of a real human doing research. It digs into each branch, then thinks to see if it is valuable or not, then continues going down the rabbit hole. It makes me feel I am walking together with someone and listening to them explain the topic through their own lens. Occasionally, I can pick up some great insights, because it intelligently deduces that from the facts. I do not find these things in Gemini Deep Research, and definitely not in Claude Deep Research.
