Rashidi positioned Respona against Ahrefs and SEMrush, describing those platforms as analytics tools that report on traffic and authority metrics, whereas Respona actively builds the external citations that improve those metrics. He told Latka: "Ahrefs, SEMrush are analytics tools. They tell you like here's how much traffic you get. Respona helps you actually increase those."
Visme was described as a competitor to Canva at the time of Respona's founding, though Visme is now a customer and equity holder rather than a competitor to Respona. Rashidi also referenced the CEO of Air Slate, who Latka noted scaled that company to $200 million in revenue using SEO, as context for the broader debate about AI search optimization. The $200 million figure was stated by Latka as his characterization of Air Slate's scale and was not confirmed by Rashidi as Air Slate's official figure.