ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature launched back in February, but it was only available to paying users — free users couldn’t use it. In this era when AI services are all offering Deep Research for free, ChatGPT really falls short. It took a while, but OpenAI finally officially announced earlier that it’s opening up to free users, though with one difference from the paid version: free users get the “Deep Research Lite” version.
Additionally, OpenAI also announced that it is increasing the usage allowance for the paid version of Deep Research, so paid users will now have more uses.
OpenAI launches a lightweight version of Deep Research, also available on the free tier.
Earlier, OpenAI announced the launch of a lightweight version of Deep Reearch on its official X social media platform. Just as the name implies, it will have some differences from the full version.
We've noticed many of you love using deep research, so we’re expanding usage for Plus, Team, and Pro users by introducing a lightweight version of deep research in order to increase current rate limits.
We’re also rolling out the lightweight version to Free users.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 24, 2025
The following chart shows the performance test results: the lightweight version scored 45.6, slightly lower than the full version’s 51.5. Even so, the Deep Research lightweight version still delivers deeper and higher-quality responses, though the content it produces is somewhat more concise.
OpenAI also mentioned that the Deep Research lite version is powered by OpenAI’s o4-mini model, with intelligence nearly on par with the full version of Deep Research that users are familiar with, but at a significantly lower cost.
Starting today, the lightweight version of Deep Research is rolling out to all free users. However, when I checked my free account, I don’t see the Deep Research feature yet, so it seems to be rolling out gradually. If yours is the same, you’ll need to wait a bit longer, but it shouldn’t be too long — OpenAI has always pushed features out to all users pretty quickly in the past.
In addition to the free version, paying users can also use Deep Research Lite, but this automatically switches to the Lite version only after the usage limit for the full version has been reached.
The following are the current usage limits for Deep Research across the various ChatGPT plans:
- Free users: 5 uses per month (lightweight version only)
- Plus & Team users: 10 full versions + 15 lightweight versions per month
- Pro users: 125 full versions + 125 lightweight versions per month
- Enterprise users: 10 full versions per month
By the way, it seems like OpenAI must have received a new batch of GPUs recently—besides a significant increase in Deep Research usage, they also announced a few days ago that ChatGPT Plus users’ o3 and o4-mini-high usage has doubled, becoming:
- The o3 model has 100 messages per week.
- The o4-mini model has 300 messages per day.
- o4-mini-high has 100 messages per day
we have doubled rate limits for o3 and o4-mini-high for chatgpt plus subscribers.
enjoy!
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 23, 2025
Source: KOCPC Chinese