I Tried Open AI Deep Research So You Don’t Have To

So I was grabbing a drink with a friend, and—because AI is literally all I talk about these days—the conversation, of course, turned to AI.

He asked me if I had used Deep Research (a ChatGPT Pro feature for “deep research”).

If you’re paying for ChatGPT Pro, you get 10 Deep Reason queries a month, so I figured, why not put it to the test?

Deep Reason vs. The Hype

I used Deep Reason to run a market analysis on the South Asian diaspora and the chai industry (you can find the results below), and here are some of my takeaways.

First impressions?

• It’s solid for starting a business, understanding market trends, or prepping investor decks.

  • Good starting point but it’s going to leave a lot initially for you to go through (this also may be human error, because I could’ve definitely prompted better)

• Like all AI tools, it still needs human input to tailor the results (lot of fluff).

• The feature itself is useful, but not $200/month useful.

Can You Get the Same Results Without Paying for Pro?

Yes.

A friend of mine basically recreated the same feature using a mix of AI agents—and honestly, his setup produced the same (if not better) results.

✅ Higher technical barrier for the average person.
✅ Once set up, you can use it forever and save $200/month.

So unless you’re on an enterprise plan, I wouldn’t say Deep Reason alone is worth the Pro subscription.

(If anyone’s interested in setting up agents for their business, got a guy that can help)

The Bigger Picture: AI is the Cheat Code

Look—whether it’s Deep Reason, AI Agents, or some tool that doesn’t exist yet, the reality is this is where everything is headed.

The new wave of unicorn startups won’t be 500-person teams.

They’ll be 1-5 person teams leveraging AI to do the work of 100-person companies.

If you’re not learning how to use AI now, you’re already behind.