Why ChatGPT Picks Resend Over SendGrid: What 4,126 AI Answers Teach About ChatGPT SEO

Resend is the email provider AI assistants recommend most. Our State of AI Search report on transactional email collected 4,126 answers from eight assistants between October 1 and 26, 2026. Resend ranked first in 1,084 of those answers (26%). Amazon SES was second with 17%.

SendGrid is named about as often as Resend, in 59% of the answers. But it was only ranked first in 2% of the answers. ChatGPT named SendGrid in 196 answers but put it first in none.

ChatGPT SEO is the idea of getting ChatGPT to mention your product and rank it first when someone is looking for a tool in your category. Because ChatGPT searched the web in 519 of its 520 answers here, what ChatGPT says is based on what the model already knows about you and the pages that the model reads when it searches. This includes things like your pricing page, your docs, and any comparisons that mention you. The pages, code, and pricing that put Resend first are all public. So, any devtool company can copy Resend.

How often does ChatGPT recommend Resend?

Resend was ChatGPT's top recommendation for transactional email 163 times out of 520 (31%). Postmark was recommended first 90 times, Amazon SES 89 times, and SendGrid 0 times.

The other seven assistants lean the same way. Here are the six providers they rank first most often, out of 4,126 answers:

Resend is mentioned less than Amazon SES, Postmark, and SendGrid, but is still the most likely to be listed as number one because Resend is listed as a recommendation in most answers where it is mentioned. Resend is listed as number one in 45% of the answers that mention it (1,084 of 2,385), compared to Amazon SES (25%), Postmark (22%), and SendGrid (4%).

Resend is the most common first pick for seven of the eight assistants. Claude is the one exception, by a single answer: it ranks Amazon SES first 81 times and Resend 80 times. This is how each assistant treats Resend:

Each row has 520 answers, because each assistant answered each question once per day. Google AI Overviews had a few daily fetch failures, so those had 486 answers. The percentage of first picks for Resend stayed between 23% and 32% on all 26 days.

In the week of October 19 to 25, 2026, the resend package was downloaded 8.7 million times on npm. SendGrid's Node.js package was downloaded 3.0 million times and Postmark's package was downloaded 0.8 million times.

Resend owns the questions developers ask first

Resend's 26% is an average over very different questions. Split by question, Resend wins almost every answer where a developer is adding email to an app, and almost none where the buyer cares most about price or inbox placement. Each assistant answered each question 26 times, so each row counts about 206 answers:

Each of these brands wins the questions that match its one reason. Our report saves why each answer recommends a brand, and the reasons for the top three each follow one theme:

Cursor sums up why it picks Resend: "Best default for many new products: clean API, good free tier, excellent template story if you use React."

The developer questions are those asked at the beginning of a project by the person who writes the code. They are also the questions a coding agent might get when someone asks it to add email to an app and the agent installs one SDK.

A brand with a strong reason does not need to win every question. Resend loses the price and inbox questions by a large margin but is still the category leader because it captures almost all of the early-stage developer questions.

Resend's free tier number dates from 2023

The Resend free plan provides 3000 emails per month, with a 100 per day limit. Resend set this limit on June 12, 2023, 30 times larger than its previous 100 free emails per month.

Now three years later, the answers are accurate. 1001 answers have the word 3000 on the same line as Resend, and 416 of these answers also specify the limit of 100 per day. The 2023 blog post is cited in 56 answers.

And the model has been trained on these numbers because they haven’t changed in years. We asked 4 different models from memory (search turned off), and they correctly gave Resend’s 3000 emails 20 out of 20 times. For Clerk (auth) and Neon (Postgres), they gave the numbers of the older free tier plans, since both updated in 2026.

SendGrid, on the other hand, eliminated its free plan on May 27, 2025. New accounts now get 60 days of a trial with 100 emails per day. SendGrid is mentioned negatively in 527 of the answers. 277 of these mentions explicitly point out the removal of the free plan. Asked what a SaaS should use, OpenCode answered: “SendGrid killed its free tier in 2025 (now a 60-day trial), so it's less attractive for new SaaS.”

This comes up most often in the free tier question. 134 out of the 206 answers to the question, “which email api has the best free tier,” mention SendGrid. 128 of those do so negatively. However, 156 of the 277 answers come from the other questions, like the small team question or the SaaS question, that don’t ask about the free tier. SendGrid’s removal of the free tier is cited in answers to 13 of our 20 questions.

In answers to 15 out of 20 questions, Resend’s 3,000 number comes up, so a free tier number travels to many different questions and Resend’s number helps out on each of those questions, whereas SendGrid’s cut hurts on each of those questions.

React Email puts Resend into answers about templates

React Email is Resend's open-source library for writing emails as React components. It was launched in September 2022 by Resend, and currently has 19,881 stars on GitHub, about 20 times the 971 of Resend's own Node.js SDK. In the week of October 19 to 25, 2026, the components package of React Email had 5.0 million npm downloads.

React Email is free, and can be used with 16 email providers, such as SendGrid, Postmark and Amazon SES, but answers treat it as part of Resend. React Email is mentioned in 1,032 answers (25% of all answers), and each of these also mentions Resend.

Answers mentioning React Email are also more likely to recommend Resend. In 1,032 answers that mention React Email, Resend is mentioned as first choice in 712 answers (69%). In contrast, in 1,353 answers that mention Resend without mentioning React Email, Resend is mentioned as first choice in 372 answers (27%).

This is partly due to the questions being answered, with React Email mentioned most frequently in questions about Next.js, where Resend is already the preferred choice. However, the same trend holds true for most questions: out of 10 questions where both types of answer are common, in 8 questions Resend is mentioned as first choice more often in answers that also mention React Email:

• "what's the best transactional email service": 37% with React Email vs 8% without.
• "what should i use to send password reset and welcome emails": 66% with React Email vs 28% without.
• "i need to send emails from my saas, what should i use": 78% with React Email vs 69% without.

The library gives the assistants another piece of concrete evidence to support Resend. “React Email support”, “React Email templates” and “React Email integration” are 12% of the reasons the assistants give for Resend. Cursor on the Next.js question: “For most Next.js apps (especially on Vercel), Resend + React Email is the usual default: simple SDK, first-class Next.js docs, and templates as React components.”

This is what a React Email template looks like. It renders to an HTML string, and any provider can send that:

import { Body, Button, Heading, Html, Text, render } from 'react-email'

function WelcomeEmail({ name, link }: { name: string; link: string }) {
  return (
    <Html lang="en">
      <Body>
        <Heading>Welcome, {name}</Heading>
        <Text>Your account is ready.</Text>
        <Button href={link}>Open your dashboard</Button>
      </Body>
    </Html>
  )
}

const email = <WelcomeEmail name="Ada" link="https://example.com/dashboard" />
const html = await render(email)
const text = await render(email, { plainText: true })

console.log(`${html.length} characters of HTML`)
console.log(text)

988 characters of HTML
WELCOME, ADA

Your account is ready.

Open your dashboard https://example.com/dashboard

Unlike other providers, where you render the component first and then send the HTML, Resend’s SDK takes the actual component in a react field. This means that a Next.js route can just pass the component through (resend.com/nextjs has the full route).

React Email handles the step right before sending — the step of writing the email itself. React Email is used by developers every day, and carries the Resend name. The assistants name the two together, so having an open-source tool for the job right next to your product can help make sure your name is mentioned in answers that wouldn’t have otherwise.

One page for each framework

resend.com/nextjs is Resend's landing page for Next.js. It says "Send emails with Next.js" at the top, along with a quote from Next.js creator Guillermo Rauch. Next is code for the App Router and Server Actions, then React Email setup, then a video called "Send in under 10 minutes".

This page is cited in 133 answers, 132 of which rank Resend first. 130 of these are answers to the question "best way to send email from a next.js app". The step-by-step Next.js guide in Resend's docs is cited in 69 answers, all 69 ranking Resend first.

The page matches the question word for word. The framework is in the URL and the title, and the page shows code that people can use right away. Out of 207 answers to the Next.js question, Resend is named in all 207 and ranks first in 199.

Resend has landing pages for other stacks as well, which are also cited by the assistants, such as Node.js, Express, Django, SvelteKit and more.

However, framework pages only help when the framework doesn't have its own solution. On "how do i send emails from my django app", 184 of 206 answers rank Django's own docs first, while Resend is ranked first in only 5 answers. Django comes with its own functions for sending email, so the assistants explain those first and name a provider after, if at all. Resend's Django guide is still cited in 17 answers.

What ChatGPT reads on resend.com

ChatGPT runs 5.8 web searches per answer on these questions, and Codex runs 5.9. Most of the other assistants run about two. ChatGPT puts Resend in its very first search in 178 of its 520 answers, and Codex in 187, before either one has read a single page. These are two of ChatGPT's first searches:

official Resend pricing email API
site:resend.com pricing email API official

The eight assistants performed 11,463 searches in total; 18% of these searches are for Resend, the most of any provider. 571 searches look only at resend.com.

Then ChatGPT reads Resend's own pages. It cites resend.com in 262 of its 520 answers, and the pricing page in 178. These are the resend.com pages that all eight assistants cite most:

Codex is very likely reading the company handbook on Resend's site. 88 out of 91 answers citing "How we make money" are generated by Codex (often in the context of cheapest service, growing bill and best service questions). The page itself is a 3-minute read and explains the free tier and pricing in plain English: "If a solo developer is sending a few emails for their side project, they shouldn't be charged a ton of money for it." The pay-as-you-go changelog from December 5, 2025 is very similar: 102 out of 113 answers are generated by Codex. Both pages are about Resend's pricing model and explain it in the buyer's language, which an assistant can then use in its answer about pricing.

There is also guidance on Resend's site on when to use its services. The llms.txt (a plain-text index of the site written for AI tools) starts with the "When to use Resend" section: "Reach for Resend when a task involves sending, receiving, or managing email programmatically". Then follows a list of tasks described in plain English, such as sending welcome emails, password resets, batch sending and inbound email. There are links to a setup guide for agents, a command line tool, MCP server and skills for coding agents. There is also a link on the pricing page "Are you an AI agent? See pricing" that points to a markdown version of the page.

The questions Resend doesn't win yet

Resend’s reason is the developer experience, so it wins the questions on how to get started. But the assistants pick other providers for other types of questions. Here are some examples:

• Inbound email. Resend launched inbound email on November 3, 2025. On the question “i need to receive and parse inbound emails in my app”, it is named in 102 out of 207 answers and ranked first in 5 answers. Postmark is ranked first in 97 answers and Mailgun is ranked first in 40 answers.
• Product and marketing email together. Resend’s marketing email product is called Broadcasts. On the question “what should i use to send both product emails and marketing emails”, it is named in 87 out of 205 answers and ranked first in 6 answers. Brevo is ranked first in 99 answers.
• Deliverability. On the question “which email service has the best deliverability”, Resend is named in 38 out of 207 answers and never ranked first. Postmark is ranked first in 151 answers.

Postmark wins the inbound question by offering a developer story of its own. Here is a saved reason for Postmark on the inbound email question: “It offers the simplest developer experience and parsed JSON webhooks.” Postmark also published a Postmark vs Resend page, which is cited in 83 answers. It says Resend’s inbound webhooks send “metadata only”.

This demonstrates that a new feature doesn’t benefit from the old reason. Even though inbound email has been out for almost a year, the assistants still send this question to Postmark. A new product requires its own short reason, its own page with the question in the title, and its own comparison, just like /nextjs for the Next.js question.

What to take from Resend

Another devtool company could do a lot of things to copy Resend, such as:

• figure out the one reason for your product, and then identify the questions buyers have that are answered by that reason. In Resend’s case, that’s developer experience and then the questions at the start of a project.
• keep your free tier simple, and the same for a long time. In Resend’s case, 3,000 emails per month dates back to 2023, and the answers still get it right.
• build an open-source tool for the job right next to your product, and use your name. React Email is named in 25% of the answers, and always right next to Resend.
• write a single page for each framework your buyers are using. Include the name of the framework in the URL, the page title, and the code.
• explain your pricing and how you charge clearly, in pages that can be used by an assistant.
• tell agents in your llms.txt when to use you, as a list of tasks.
• make sure to give each new product its own reason, pages, and comparison.
• Track how often you're named, ranked first and cited for each question and assistant.