A Herculean Struggle: Manus AI vs. Deep Research in the Struggle for AI Supremacy

I compared Manus AI and Deep Research head-to-head across three different queries—here's what I learned, and here are specific applications where I think each research tool shines!

Big claims require big evidence. In this case, Manus AI came out of the blue on March 5th with one of the biggest claims in tech: that the tool was equivalent to (or better than) OpenAI’s Deep Research, which is by most measures the smartest AI on the planet. To be fair to the team at Manus AI, it wasn’t so much their claim as it was the claim of many AI influencers over the weekend, who pronounced themselves amazed at the quality of Manus (and many of whom said it was better than Deep Research).

I set out to test those claims and really put Manus AI and Deep Research through a rigorous end-to-end test so I could figure out practically speaking how these two tools worked. Read on for what I learned!

Setting up the Heavyweights: OpenAI Deep Research vs. Manus AI

AI has grown far beyond the simple quest for raw computational power. Today, the race is just as much about how intelligence is structured, presented, and applied as it is about sheer performance metrics. In the emerging landscape of AI-driven research tools, user experience and output strategy are now major areas of competition. Machine intelligence is no longer only about delivering accurate answers—it is about how those answers are curated, formatted, and made actionable for professional or personal decision-making.

Against this backdrop, two AI-driven research assistants—Manus AI and OpenAI’s Deep Research—stand out for their contrasting approaches to solving complex problems. And I don’t compare them lightly! Manus AI came out of the blue sky on March 5 2025 and shocked everyone with its capabilities and results. We’re all still figuring out what each tool does, and I’m sure this isn’t the last time I’ll compare the two, so look on this as a very detailed, hands-on comparison of the two tools across identical prompts. And yes, I will be including full text responses for both!