January 16, 2026
Password: "password" chaos
Show HN: Aventos – An experiment in cheap AI SEO
Cheap AI SEO or Cheap Trick? Community split on trust and price
TLDR: Aventos launched a low-cost tool to track brand mentions in chatbot answers, arguing AI search analytics should be cheap. The comments explode over trust and pricing—skeptics cry “vibe-coded,” B2B purists demand premiums—while the demo’s “password: password” moment becomes the meme of the day.
Aventos just dropped a bargain‑bin tool to track whether your brand shows up in answers from chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews, promising free plans and $10–15/month pricing. The pitch: AEO/GEO—AI answer visibility—should be a commodity, not a $200/month upsell. The internet? Instantly divided.
One camp is clutching pearls over trust. “This looks like something vibe‑coded in a weekend,” says a skeptic, pointing to the eyebrow‑raising demo where the password is literally “password.” If AI can generate glossy sites in minutes, how do small businesses tell a real product from a vaporware wrapper?
Then the B2B hardliners arrive with the backhand: “Charge a premium. That’s business.” To them, undercutting ‘wrappers around the same data providers’ sounds naïve—features and support are where margins live. Others cheer the scrappy, small‑biz pricing and multiple daily runs, arguing AI search is where customers now get answers—and clicks are dying.
Cue memes: screenshots of “password: password,” jokes about inventing new acronyms like AEO, and side‑eye at Perplexity/Claude/Gemini support “coming 2026.” Fans call it “SEO for bots,” detractors dub it “metrics cosplay.”
Whether you see a hero for mom‑and‑pop shops or a clone, Aventos lit up the startup debate: authenticity vs. hustle, premium vs. accessible.
Key Points
- •Aventos tracks brand visibility in AI-generated search responses from ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
- •The platform runs 3–20 times daily to compute average visibility and detect patterns.
- •Pricing includes a free tier (3 prompts) and paid plans around $10–15/month, with $10 per 10 additional prompts.
- •Features include generating AEO-optimized content and linking AI visibility to clicks, conversions, and revenue.
- •Support for Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini is planned for Q2 2026; DeepSeek is excluded due to low market share and cost impact.