By Google DeepMindLondon, United Kingdom6 products across 6 categories
Built for this. Runs a multi-step search across dozens of sources and returns a structured, referenced report. Strong first pass on an unfamiliar field.
Free plan
Yes
Included in the free Gemini tier, with a limited number of reports
Month to month
$4.99/mo
Google AI Plus
Billed yearly
$4.17/mo
$49.99 a year, Google AI Plus plan −16%
Watch out: Searches the open web, not scholarly databases. It will miss paywalled literature a library search would find.
All plans (4)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Included in the free Gemini tier, with a limited number of reports
Google AI Plus
$4.99/mo
2x the usage limits. Deep Research is part of the Google AI plans, not sold separately
Google AI Pro
$19.99/mo
4x the usage limits and the Pro model behind longer reports
By ConsensusBoston, United States1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Searches published papers and tells you how many of them support a claim, which turns a yes-or-no question into a count you can inspect.
Free plan
Yes
Basic paper search, 15 Pro messages a month and up to 3 Deep reviews a month
Month to month
$20/mo
Pro
Billed yearly
$12/mo
$144 a year, Pro plan −40%
Watch out: The consensus meter reflects the papers it found, not the state of the field. Deep reviews are the metered resource — 3 a month free, 15 on Pro, 200 on Deep — so that is what decides the tier rather than how much you search.
All plans (3)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free plan at $0: basic paper search, 15 Pro messages a month and up to 3 Deep reviews a month, though the same card also describes the free tier as being without AI analysis
Pro
$20/mo · $12/mo yearly
unlimited Pro messages, 15 Deep reviews a month and unlimited access to every research tool
Deep
$65/mo · $45/mo yearly
everything in Pro with 200 Deep reviews a month, aimed at researchers and clinicians running frequent literature reviews. Team and Enterprise are priced on their own tab
By You.comPalo Alto, United States1 product across 2 categories
Built for this. Answers a question from one live search pass and lists the pages it used beside the answer, so a claim can be checked without leaving it.
Free plan
Yes
Free tier of 100 web search queries a day, no API key required
Month to month
None
Not published
Billed yearly
—
No yearly price published
Watch out: The company has moved toward developers: the pricing page now sells APIs by the thousand calls, and the consumer assistant has changed shape several times while that happened. Good for checking a fact, less safe to build a habit on.
All plans (6)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free tier of 100 web search queries a day, no API key required
Web Search API
$5 per 1,000 calls, 1 to 100 results a call, news included
$100 free credit
Contents API
$1 per 1,000 pages extracted as Markdown or HTML, several URLs a request
$100 free credit
Answer API
$5 per 1,000 calls for a cited, synthesised answer
$100 free credit
Research API
from $12 per 1,000 calls on Lite, rising through Standard, Deep, Exhaustive and Frontier tiers
$100 free credit
Finance Research API
from $110 per 1,000 calls on Deep, with an Exhaustive tier above
Two things separate these and both are on every card.
Fit
Whether a tool is built for this job, a strong fit for it, or
able to do it without that being its focus.
Free plan
Whether there is a tier you can keep using rather than a
trial that expires.
The order
Fit first, then a free plan, then alphabetical. There is
no score, no weighting we decline to publish, and nothing on this site a company can buy.
Questions
What is the best ai for business research?
There is no single answer, which is why this page lists 7 rather than one: Perplexity, ChatGPT deep research, Gemini Deep Research, Claude, ChatGPT, Consensus, You.com. 6 of them are built for this kind of work rather than able to do it. Start with a free one.
Which of these have a free plan?
7 of the 7: Perplexity, ChatGPT deep research, Gemini Deep Research, Claude, ChatGPT, Consensus, You.com. Free means a real free tier you can keep using, not a trial that expires.
How was this list chosen?
By hand, from the 750 products this site tracks, and it is checked against the catalogue on every build — a product renamed or removed breaks the build rather than quietly disappearing from here. Nothing on this site can be paid for: no listing, no position, no wording.
