ChatSEO
ChatSEO is an AI agent, a program that uses a language model to plan and carry out several steps of a task, for SEO (search engine optimisation: changing a website so that it appears higher in search results). The customer connects Google Search Console, Google's free service that reports which searches showed a site, at which position, and how many people clicked. ChatSEO reads that data, lists the changes to make in order, writes the articles and page titles, and can publish them to WordPress, Shopify or Webflow. According to the company's list of service providers, all its agents run on Anthropic's Claude models. Plans cost €29 to €79 a month.
Three co-founders built it: Paul Vengeons, a French SEO consultant since 2020; Nicholas Dulait, who works on the product from Brussels; and Léo Leducq, a developer in Bordeaux who had shipped earlier SaaS products (software sold as a subscription and used in a web browser). The first verified revenue came in December 2025. On 14 October 2026 TrustMRR, a site that reads a startup's payment account directly, showed US$258,617 in total revenue from Stripe and MRR (monthly recurring revenue: what the active subscriptions bring in each month) of US$32,086. That is a run rate, the current monthly figure times 12, of US$385,032 a year. The company says it took no outside money. It is operated by GROW IT, a small French company with one or two employees in the official register.
The revenue figures are grade A, because they come from the payment processor. The customer counts, the team and the growth story come from the founders' posts and the company's pages (grade C). The page also covers two limits of the promise to get customers '#1 on Google and ChatGPT': Google's rule against scaled content abuse, its name for publishing many pages mainly to manipulate rankings rather than to help readers, and a study published in January 2026 that found AI assistants give a different list of brands almost every time they answer the same question.
The numbers, graded
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring revenue per month (MRR), 14 October 2026 | US$32,086 | A | Stripe data that TrustMRR reads through an API key. TrustMRR shows MRR 1.6% lower than 30 days earlier. | [1] |
| Annual run rate from that MRR | US$385,032 | calc | Calculated: US$32,086 times 12. This is the headline figure on this page. | [1] |
| Total revenue since the start, to 14 October 2026 | US$258,617 | A | Stripe-verified. The figure for the last 12 months is the same, so all of it was earned within one year. | [1] |
| Revenue in the last 30 days, to 14 October 2026 | US$52,124 | A | Stripe-verified, 58.8% more than in the 30 days before. The founders called it their 'first 50k month' on 13 October. | [1, 13] |
| 30-day revenue compared with MRR | 1.62 times | calc | Calculated: US$52,124 divided by US$32,086. The terms of sale say an annual plan is charged for the whole year at once, while MRR counts one twelfth of it per month. That is the most likely reason for the gap, but TrustMRR does not split the revenue by plan. | [1, 6] |
| Revenue per calendar month | US$9,803 in December 2025, US$28,582 in June 2026, US$41,359 in September 2026 | A | Stripe-verified monthly timeline. October 2026 had US$24,445 by 14 October. | [1] |
| Growth from the first full month to the best month | 4.22 times in 9 months | calc | Calculated: US$41,359 in September 2026 divided by US$9,803 in December 2025. | [1] |
| Active subscriptions, 14 October 2026 | 732 | A | Stripe-verified. Paul Vengeons wrote on 28 September 2026 that ChatSEO had 721 customers. | [1, 14] |
| Revenue per active subscription | about US$43.83 a month | calc | Calculated: US$32,086 divided by 732. This is close to Pro billed yearly, €39 or about US$43.63, the plan that the pricing page says most customers choose. | [1, 5, 24] |
| MRR steps in Léo Leducq's words, 9 October 2026 | '10k : 4 ans, 20k : 4 mois, 30k : 7 semaines' (10k in 4 years, 20k in 4 months, 30k in 7 weeks) | C | His post begins 'On vient de passer les 30k de MRR avec ChatSEO' (we have just passed 30k of MRR with ChatSEO). He gives no currency and does not say whether the 4 years include his earlier products. Nicholas Dulait quoted it as '30K MRR €'. | [12] |
| Stripe MRR in euros | about €28,679 | calc | Calculated: US$32,086 divided by the ECB rate of US$1.1188 per euro on 13 October 2026. So the founders' '30k' matches TrustMRR only if it is counted in US dollars. No source says how the founders count it. | [1, 24, 12] |
| Website visitors in the last 30 days | 43,776 | A | From the connected Google Analytics account, through TrustMRR, with US$1.20 of revenue per visitor. | [1] |
| Users, company claim | more than 20,000 website owners and more than 200,000 SEO analyses | C | About page, October 2026. Most users do not pay: 732 subscriptions are active. | [4, 1] |
| Team | 3 co-founders and one more person on development | C | The about page names the co-founders: Paul Vengeons (SEO), Nicholas Dulait (product) and Léo Leducq (software). A post by Nicholas Dulait on 9 October 2026 thanks three teammates on X: the two other co-founders and one more person, who posts about development work. TrustMRR: team size 2 to 5 people. | [4, 12, 1] |
| Employees in the official register | band '1 or 2 employees', 2024 data; the registered seat is marked as not an employer | B | French business register record for GROW IT. The president is a natural person whose name is not public in this record. | [11] |
| Operating company | GROW IT, a single-shareholder simplified joint-stock company (SASU), share capital €1,000 | C | Legal notice of chatseo.app, which names Paul Vengeons as publication director. The register gives 5 February 2024 as the creation date and computer programming (code 62.01Z) as the activity. | [8, 11] |
| Outside funding | none | C | The founder-written TrustMRR profile says 'Bootstrapped'. Paul Vengeons wrote that his target was '30k/mois, soit 10k par associé' (30k a month, so 10k per partner), enough for all three to live from the company. | [1, 14] |
| Prices | €29, €49 and €79 a month, 20% less billed yearly; Agency from €200 a month | C | Pricing page, 14 October 2026. One credit is one message to the agent. | [5] |
| AI models | Anthropic's Claude models for all agents, Perplexity's Sonar model for web search, Voyage AI for embeddings | C | Sub-processor list, change log to 1 September 2026. Model calls go through the Vercel AI Gateway, and ChatSEO has no direct contract with Anthropic or Perplexity. | [9] |
| Guarantee of results | none | C | The terms of service say ChatSEO does not guarantee that the results 'will be accurate or reliable'. The terms of sale say the service 'relies on AI technologies whose results cannot be guaranteed'. The only guarantee is a refund of the first charge. | [7, 6] |
| Affiliate commission | 30% of each subscription, every month, for life | C | Affiliate page. The sub-processor list names Tolt for referral tracking. | [10, 9] |
| Léo Leducq's earlier product | TikMatiz: US$98,692 in Stripe-verified revenue since January 2023, nothing in the last 3 months | A | TrustMRR profile of TikMatiz, a tool for short video content founded on 9 January 2023. His founder page lists it for sale. | [3, 2] |
| Time from the founding date to the October 2026 figure | 11 months | calc | Calculated: November 2025, the founded date on TrustMRR, to October 2026. | [1] |
How to read this table: a grade A value comes from TrustMRR, which reads the company's Stripe account and Google Analytics through their APIs. Grade B is the official French business register. Grade C values are the founders' posts on X and the company's own pages. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the sources it names.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 25.73 (€23) | 32.45 (€29) | 100 credits a month, 1 site |
| Pro | 43.63 (€39) | 54.82 (€49) | 200 credits a month, 3 sites, Google Analytics, MCP server and API |
| Ranker | 70.48 (€63) | 88.39 (€79) | 400 credits a month, 10 sites, up to 5 members |
| Agency | from 223.76 (from €200) | custom credits, sites and team size |
Starter costs €29 a month, or €23 a month billed yearly; Pro €49 or €39; Ranker €79 or €63; Agency from €200 a month. One credit is one message to the agent, and the plans include 100, 200 and 400 credits a month. Every paid plan starts with a 7-day free trial with 30 credits. On day 7 the card is charged for the chosen cycle: one month, or the whole year at once. The first charge is refunded in full on request within 7 days. The pricing page says that 76% of customers choose Pro.
The timeline
From a founding date in November 2025 to a first US$50,000 month in October 2026. Each entry carries its grade.
- 9 January 2023ALéo Leducq founds TikMatiz, a tool for short video content. Over its life it takes in US$98,692, verified through Stripe. [3]
- 2023 and 2024CInternet Archive copies of www.chatseo.app show an earlier site with the same name: 'ChatGPT like you haven't seen it before', trained on Google's SEO documentation. No source says who ran it. [23]
- 5 February 2024BGROW IT, the company that now operates chatseo.app, is registered, with computer programming as its activity. [11, 8]
- About September 2025CNicholas Dulait had paid for a coaching session with Paul Vengeons for the SEO of his previous startup, then sent him the idea. They look for a developer and find Léo Leducq. Paul later dates the start of the project to 'a year' before 28 September 2026. [4, 14]
- 24 September 2025CThe company's X account, @ChatSEO_app, is created. [17]
- 29 November 2025CFounded date given on TrustMRR. The first customer reviews on the pricing page are dated 1 December 2025. [1, 5]
- December 2025AFirst full month of verified revenue: US$9,803. [1]
- 28 May 2026CPaul Vengeons announces that ChatSEO can now find free backlinks, once 'le boss @iziatask' puts it into production. [17]
- June 2026CThe team applies to list ChatSEO in the Shopify App Store. [15]
- 26 June 2026CLéo Leducq shares 'tout le playbook pour faire un SaaS à 20k MRR' (the whole method for a SaaS at 20k MRR), adding that the last time it was for 10k. [16]
- 1 September 2026CThe sub-processor list adds the Vercel AI Gateway, which routes calls to Anthropic's Claude models, and Perplexity for web search. [9]
- 8 September 2026CThe company replaces the ChatGPT-style logo that it had used for nine months. [17]
- September 2026ABest calendar month so far: US$41,359, verified. [1]
- 28 September 2026CPaul Vengeons: 721 customers, and '28k' passed that morning. The company account writes that many new users heard of it by word of mouth. [14, 17]
- 6 October 2026CLéo Leducq writes that Shopify suspended the app review until 4 November for one broken link. [15]
- 7 October 2026CA launch video presents ChatSEO as 'your SEO employee'. Two days later the company reports 50,000 views. [17]
- 9 October 2026CLéo Leducq: '30k de MRR'. The same day ChatSEO adds a white-label option, so that agencies can send its reports under their own logo. [12, 17]
- 13 October 2026CNicholas Dulait and Paul Vengeons post 'first 50k month'. [13, 18]
- 14 October 2026ATrustMRR: US$258,617 in total, US$52,124 in the last 30 days, MRR of US$32,086 and 732 active subscriptions. [1]
Why it worked
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
An SEO consultant's audience as the first channel
Paul Vengeons has worked as an SEO consultant since 2020 and has 10,405 followers on X. The about page says that ChatSEO's agents follow his method, which aims at revenue rather than traffic numbers. On 28 September 2026 the company account wrote that many new users came by word of mouth.
The customer's own data
ChatSEO connects to Google Search Console with read-only access and answers from the site's real queries and pages. The about page contrasts this with ChatGPT, which 'has never seen your site'. The company says that the first recommendations arrive in about 4 minutes (median).
Free guides every day, then a trial
The co-founders post long SEO guides on X. Paul Vengeons wrote on 10 October 2026 that one article by Nicholas Dulait had 580,000 views in two days. A launch video on 7 October had 50,000 views two days later. The posts link to the 7-day free trial, and affiliates earn 30% of every subscription for life.
A low price and an automatic first charge
Plans start at €29 a month, against €134 for Semrush and €119 for Ahrefs Lite in the company's own comparison. The free trial ends with an automatic charge on day 7, and an annual plan is paid for the whole year at once, which can make a month's revenue larger than MRR.
How it was built
These details come from the company's sub-processor list, about page and pricing page. They are grade C. [9, 4, 5]
- All agents run on Anthropic's Claude models through the Vercel AI Gateway. Perplexity's Sonar model handles web search, and Voyage AI makes the embeddings (number vectors that represent text) used as memory across conversations.
- 12 specialised agents cover on-page changes, internal links, indexing, structured data, backlinks, local SEO and visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews.
- Data comes from the Google Search Console API with a read-only scope, from Google Analytics, from DataForSEO for keyword, search-result and backlink data, and from Firecrawl, self-hosted on the company's Hetzner servers, for reading web pages.
- Servers are rented from Hetzner in Germany. Stripe takes the payments, Resend sends transactional email, Customer.io sends marketing email, Crisp runs the support chat, Mixpanel measures product use and Sentry reports errors.
- Articles are published straight to WordPress, Shopify or Webflow. Pro and Ranker plans add an MCP server and a REST API, so other AI tools such as Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT can read and act on the customer's SEO data.
- Usage is sold in credits: one credit is one message to the agent.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
The dead that came before
Four companies in the Loot Drop database sold automated marketing or design work, or depended on one platform's ranking rules. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Metigy
The promiseAI marketing advice that would replace a marketing team for small businesses.
Why it diedSmall businesses wanted the work done for them, not general recommendations such as posting more video. The money ran out.
The Grid
The promiseWebsites designed by AI, without paying a designer.
Why it diedThe AI was not ready. Its designs were inconsistent and worse than manual work or established tools.
Waterproof Digital Camera
The promiseAn affiliate review blog built to rank on Google and earn Amazon commissions.
Why it diedIt relied on black-hat SEO tactics. Google's algorithm updates and penalties took its traffic away.
Upworthy Insider
The promisePositive viral stories, spread through Facebook.
Why it diedFacebook changed its News Feed to show less content from publishers, and the traffic fell. There was no other channel.
What changed
The four predecessors failed in three ways that also apply to ChatSEO. Metigy sold advice that small businesses did not act on. The Grid trusted AI to do professional work before the AI could do it well. The camera blog and Upworthy depended on one platform's ranking rules, and the platform changed them.
Two things are different now. Language models in 2025 and 2026 can read a site's real Search Console data and also write and publish the change, so the product does the work instead of only advising, which is what Metigy's customers wanted. And the price is €29 to €79 a month instead of an agency fee. The dependence on Google's ranking rules has not changed: every customer result still depends on how Google treats the pages that the agent helps to write.
Can one person copy it now?
The software, yes. The audience, not easily.
The technical parts are available to anyone: Claude models through a gateway, Google's free Search Console API, a paid keyword-data provider and a credit-based subscription. The hard part to copy is distribution: a co-founder who was already a known SEO consultant with an audience, and partners who publish free, detailed guides every day where the buyers read.
Where it is still open: Other expert services that small businesses buy as monthly retainers, where the customer's data sits behind a free API: paid advertising accounts, online-shop analytics, bookkeeping.
- 1Pair a specialist who already has an audience with a developer who has shipped SaaS products before.
- 2Build the agent on the customer's own data, so every recommendation points to a real page and a real query.
- 3Publish free, detailed guides every day, each with a link to a short free trial.
- 4Charge automatically at the end of the trial, offer a yearly plan, and pay affiliates a recurring share.
What to watch
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
Google's rule on scaled content
On 5 March 2024 Google announced a spam policy on scaled content abuse: many pages made mainly to manipulate rankings rather than to help users, 'no matter whether content is produced through automation, human efforts, or some combination'. Its spam policy page, updated 28 August 2026, gives 'Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users' as an example. ChatSEO writes and publishes articles straight to customers' sites. A customer who uses it to publish many thin pages puts the site at risk under this policy, and ChatSEO's terms disclaim any result.
'#1 on ChatGPT' is not a fixed position
The tagline promises '#1 on Google and ChatGPT'. A study by SparkToro with Gumshoe, reported by Search Engine Journal on 30 January 2026, asked ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI answers for brand recommendations 2,961 times in total, running each prompt 60 to 100 times on each platform. ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews returned the same list of brands less than 1% of the time, and the same list in the same order less than 0.1% of the time. The researchers say that the share of answers in which a brand appears is the useful measure, not a rank. Gumshoe sells AI tracking tools, and the article says so.
Many competitors, including the founders' own free guides
The about page compares ChatSEO with Semrush, Ahrefs, Mangools, Seobility and SEOptimer, and on 1 September 2026 Nicholas Dulait shared a list of '10 new SEO tools' that included ChatSEO. On this site, SEObot, an AI agent that writes and publishes articles, made about US$888,000 in its last 12 months to October 2026, and Rank Prompt, which tracks brand visibility in AI answers, reached a run rate of about US$524,000 a year in 16 months, against 11 months for ChatSEO's US$385,032. The co-founders' own guides teach readers to do SEO with Claude Code, which uses the same family of models as ChatSEO's agents.
A young business, and figures that do not line up
Revenue started in December 2025, so there is less than one year of history. In the 30 days to 14 October 2026, revenue rose 58.8% while MRR fell 1.6%, according to TrustMRR. Yearly prepayments after the 7 October launch video could explain this, but the profile does not say. The founders posted '28k' on 28 September and '30k de MRR' on 9 October, while the Stripe MRR on 14 October is US$32,086, about €28,679.
Other companies' platforms, and ownership
The agents depend on Anthropic's models through Vercel's gateway, the data on Google's Search Console API, and the Shopify app on Shopify's review, which suspended it until 4 November 2026 for one broken link. The name is close to ChatGPT, the logo was too for nine months, and an earlier site called ChatSEO used the same domain in 2023 and 2024. The legal notice describes the operator as a single-shareholder company, while three co-founders call themselves partners. The sources do not say how ownership is shared.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- A TrustMRR: ChatSEO, verified revenue profile, synced 14 October 2026Read the markdown profile (https://trustmrr.com/startup/chatseo.md) in full on 14 October 2026. Revenue, MRR, subscriptions and visitors come from the connected Stripe and Google Analytics accounts (grade A). The description, team size and funding lines are written by the founders (grade C).
- C TrustMRR founder page: Léo (@iziatask)Read in full. Links the founder's X account and lists his two startups, ChatSEO and TikMatiz, the second marked for sale.
- A TrustMRR: TikMatiz, verified revenue profileRead the markdown profile (https://trustmrr.com/startup/tikmatiz.md) in full on 14 October 2026. Stripe-verified totals of Léo Leducq's earlier product.
- C ChatSEO: About usRead in full. Source for the three co-founders, the founding story, the user counts and the comparison with Semrush and Ahrefs.
- C ChatSEO: PricingRead in full on 14 October 2026. Prices, credits, plan limits and the dated customer reviews.
- C ChatSEO: General Terms of Sale, GROW ITRead the sections on the first-charge guarantee, credits, renewal and the free trial.
- C ChatSEO: Terms of ServiceRead the sections on credits, renewal, refunds and what the service does not guarantee.
- C ChatSEO: Legal noticeRead in full. Names the operating company, its legal form, share capital, register number, publication director and web host.
- C ChatSEO: Sub-processors, with a change log to 1 September 2026Read in full. Source for the AI models, the hosting and the other services that the company uses.
- C ChatSEO: Affiliate programRead in full. Source for the commission terms.
- B French business register (Annuaire des Entreprises API): GROW IT, SIREN 984 879 932Read the JSON record in full on 14 October 2026: creation date, legal form, activity code, employee band, and the president's role (the name is not public).
- C Nicholas Dulait on X, 9 October 2026: '30K MRR €', quoting Léo Leducq's post 'On vient de passer les 30k de MRR avec ChatSEO'Read in full through the fxtwitter API in his timeline, with the quoted post by @iziatask (status 2108464756231147563).
- C Nicholas Dulait on X, 13 October 2026: 'first 50k month for chatseo'Read in full through the fxtwitter API.
- C Paul Vengeons on X, 28 September 2026: '721 clients'Read in full through the fxtwitter API, as the post that the ChatSEO account quoted the same day.
- C Léo Leducq (@iziatask) on X, 6 October 2026: the Shopify App Store suspensionRead in full through the fxtwitter API, as reposted in the ChatSEO account's timeline. His own profile could not be opened through the API.
- C Léo Leducq (@iziatask) on X, 26 June 2026: the method for a SaaS at 20k MRRRead through the fxtwitter API in the ChatSEO account's timeline. The text of the thread by Paul Vengeons that it quotes was not returned, so its content is not verified.
- C ChatSEO (@ChatSEO_app) on X: profile and posts from 28 May to 13 October 2026Read the profile and the whole timeline that the fxtwitter API returns, 39 posts back to 28 May 2026, including reposts by the co-founders.
- C Paul Vengeons (@VengeonsP) on X: profile and posts from 9 to 14 October 2026Read the profile and three pages of posts through the fxtwitter API. Older pages were not returned.
- C Nicholas Dulait (@NicholasDulait) on X: profile and posts from 3 to 14 October 2026Read the profile and three pages of posts through the fxtwitter API.
- B Google Search Central blog, 5 March 2024, Chris Nelson: What web creators should know about our March 2024 core update and new spam policiesRead the section on scaled content abuse.
- B Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search, last updated 28 August 2026Read the section on scaled content abuse.
- C Search Engine Journal, 30 January 2026, Matt G. Southern: AI Recommendations Change With Nearly Every Query: SparkToroRead in full. Reports the SparkToro and Gumshoe study and says that Gumshoe sells AI tracking tools.
- C Internet Archive copy of www.chatseo.app, 8 June 2023Read the captured home page. The capture list shows pages of about the same size until at least July 2024.
- B European Central Bank: euro foreign exchange reference rates, 13 October 2026Read the US dollar rate, 1.1188 per euro, used to convert the euro prices and the MRR.
- C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.