Helium 10 for KDP: we paid for Platinum and tested it on books

The short version

Helium 10 is built for people who sell physical products on Amazon. For a paperback author, one tool is worth having: Cerebro, which pulls the keywords a competitor's book ranks for. For Kindle it comes up almost empty: on the ebook edition of a book, Cerebro found 1 keyword. On the paperback edition of the same book, it found 383.

Helium 10 can't see your KDP royalties, your profit per book, or your Amazon Ads for books. Its profit reports and alerts only connect to a Seller Central account, which is for product sellers. The listing checker doesn't accept books at all.

Our verdict: if you need a deep keyword dig for a paperback, buy Platinum for one month with a discount and cancel. Keeping Helium 10 running for books makes no sense.

How we tested it

This review isn't based on the marketing site. On September 26, 2026, we paid for the Platinum plan with Vova Even's promo code ($103.20 instead of $129) and went through every tool that has anything to do with books. We also installed the Helium 10 Chrome extension (version 8.43.1).

Our test topic was "gardening for beginners," the same one we used in our Publisher Rocket review, so the two are easy to compare.

Prices were checked against helium10.com/pricing and the plan page inside the account on the same day. Reviews come from Trustpilot.

How much Helium 10 costs in 2026

What to know before you pay:

• There's no free trial. According to Helium 10's help center, new subscribers can get a refund within 7 days of their first payment. Renewals aren't refunded.
• In 2026, Platinum got more expensive and less capable. In January the price went from $99 to $129, and the cheaper Starter plan was dropped. In April, Cerebro on Platinum was capped at 100 searches a month, and the ads tool became Diamond-only.
• The subscription renews automatically. Your next charge date shows up in the account right after you pay. To cancel: avatar in the top right → Plans & Billing → Cancel on the Platinum card.
• Magnet is no longer a separate tool. Since January 2026 it's built into Cerebro, now called Cerebro (Plus Magnet).

Promo codes from Vova Even: VOVA10 — 10% off every month, no end date; VOVA6M20 — 20% off the first six months. Sign-up link: Helium 10.

Platinum vs Diamond limits

Helium 10 shows you this table right after you pay, with a big button to upgrade to Diamond.

100 Cerebro searches a month isn't much. Every keyword search and every ASIN search (a search by a book's Amazon product number) uses one. So does clicking a book from the "View Top Products" suggestions. In one evening of testing we used 4.

What Helium 10 does for a book author

Below, we go through each tool in order.

Cerebro by ASIN: a competitor's keywords

This is why authors buy Helium 10 in the first place. Enter another book's number, and Cerebro shows the searches it gets found for on Amazon: organic, sponsored, and Amazon's recommendations.

We tested the paperback "The Year-Round Vegetable Garden for Beginners" (ISBN 1916825214). Cerebro found 383 search terms: 306 rank organically and 160 in sponsored results (some do both). For each one you get estimated monthly searches, a trend, a suggested ad bid, the number of competing products, and the book's organic and sponsored rank.

What's useful in practice:

• Ready-made search terms for your book and your ads. "gardening books for beginners" gets about 810 searches a month, and the book ranks #4. "gardening book" gets 1,171, "vegetable gardening book" 435.
• Other books' titles and author names. The list includes "garden yourself happy johnny" and "how to grow food huw richards." These are handy as negative keywords in a broad-match campaign, so you don't pay for clicks on other authors' names.
• Any book number works. Cerebro accepted both an ISBN and the B0… number KDP assigns to a paperback published without its own ISBN. One trap: if you accidentally leave a space after the number, Cerebro reads it as a keyword and searches for nonsense.

Locked on Platinum: Amazon's click and purchase share data (ABA), month-over-month comparison, competitor tracking, and the "Add to Ads Campaign" button.

Kindle: the big letdown

Same book, ebook edition (ASIN B0CG3JXCNV). Cerebro found 1 keyword and 207 monthly searches in total. The paperback had 383 keywords and 161,958 searches.

If you sell ebooks or want to study Kindle competitors, Cerebro will give you next to nothing. And it still uses up a search.

Cerebro by keyword: lots of junk

Enter a keyword, and Cerebro collects related searches. For "gardening for beginners" it returned 1,987 search terms and an estimate of 526 monthly searches for the phrase itself.

The problem is that Helium 10 searches all of Amazon, not just books. The default list includes "gardening gifts for men," "garden tools starter kit," "garden equipment," and the Spanish "jardinería herramientas." These are people looking for a shovel, not a book.

Filters help, such as keeping only terms that contain "book," and so do presets like "Brand Name Removal." You'll still have to sort through the list yourself.

Xray: sales estimates right on Amazon

Xray runs in the Chrome extension. Once installed, every book in Amazon search results shows its Best Sellers Rank (BSR), subcategories, author, page count, and publication date. Above the results there's a summary of the first page.

The Analyze Products button opens the Xray table with estimated monthly sales and revenue for each book. For "gardening for beginners" paperbacks:

• first-page revenue is about $100,046 a month, an average of $3,573 per book;
• "The Year-Round Vegetable Garden," ranked 26,301, gets about 236 sales and $3,993 a month;
• the Old Farmer's Almanac, ranked 2,852, gets about 1,543 sales and $18,554.

Kindle books get estimates too, but you can't trust them the way you can trust paperback numbers:

Three more things we noticed:

• Revenue in the summary is locked. On Platinum, "30-Day Revenue" and "30-Day Units Sold" above the results are hidden behind "Get Plan." The Xray table shows them, the summary doesn't.
• The Fees column isn't about KDP. Xray calculates Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) warehouse fees, $8–11 per book. That has nothing to do with KDP royalties: what comes out of your list price is Amazon's share and printing.
• Paperbacks show size and weight as "Non-physical goods." A small thing, but it shows the table was built for products.

Black Box: rough for book niches

Black Box finds products by filters: category, sales, reviews, price, BSR. There's a "Books & eBooks" category, with Books and Kindle Store inside. It also has columns useful for books: author, publisher, publication date, format.

With no filters, Black Box returns 200 random books, from a guitar self-study book ranked 1.5 million to a reseller's copy priced at $1,048. We set a clear query: gardening books, under 300 reviews, over 150 sales a month.

The result was only 6 books, with an obvious error: for a book ranked 552,430, Black Box estimated 169 sales a month. At that rank, a book sells a few copies a month, not one a day. Meanwhile, the book Xray credits with 236 sales doesn't show up in Black Box at all.

For choosing a book niche, Category Search in Publisher Rocket or the category screens in AuthorLens work better.

Keyword Tracker

You can add any book, not just your own: a number and a list of keywords, up to 500 on Platinum. We added a competitor's book and 5 search terms. Right after adding, there are no numbers yet: Helium 10 takes a while to collect rankings. Hourly updates (Hourly Boost) are locked on Platinum.

For your own book, this tool is useful. But note that it shows where the book ranks, not how much it earns.

AI Listing Builder

It takes a book number and builds a keyword bank, then offers to write a description with AI: "Powered by GPT5," 5 free generations per account. Keyword effectiveness analysis and competitor comparison are locked on Platinum.

The fields are for a regular product: title, bullet points, description. The tool isn't built around KDP fields (subtitle, 7 keyword boxes, categories), and it isn't connected to your KDP account. The "Optimize your listing" button requires connecting Seller Central.

What doesn't work for books

Listing Analyzer checks a product listing. We entered both the ISBN and the B0… number of a paperback. The answer was the same both times: "This ASIN's category is not currently supported." At least it doesn't use up a search.

Profits tracks profit and sales. The first screen offers one action: connect a product seller account.

Alerts says it needs an Amazon MWS key, Amazon's old seller interface. Search Query Analyzer is Diamond-only and pulls data from Seller Central. Helium 10 Ads isn't on Platinum at all.

How accurate are the numbers

Amazon doesn't publish how often a term is searched or how many copies someone else's book sells. So searches, sales, and revenue in Helium 10 are estimates, as in any tool like it. Our test showed this in three ways:

• Tools within the same service disagree. Xray gives a book 236 sales a month, and Black Box doesn't see it. For another book, Black Box estimated 169 sales at a rank of 552,430.
• Kindle estimates are worse than paperback ones. Ranks differ 18x, and the sales estimates are nearly the same.
• Keyword data covers all of Amazon. There's no separate database for books, which is why keyword searches return so many products.

You can use these numbers to compare books and niches with each other. You can't use them to plan your own revenue.

Your own books' numbers can be exact. That's how AuthorLens works: ad data comes in through the official Amazon Ads API, and royalties and sales come from your KDP reports through the AuthorLens Sync extension. These are the same numbers you see in your accounts, just in one place. Numbers for other books and niches are still estimates in AuthorLens too.

What users say

On Trustpilot, Helium 10 has 2.1 out of 5 from 713 reviews: half are five stars, almost 40% are one star. Trustpilot's TrustScore gives more weight to recent reviews, which is why it sits lower than the star split suggests. On G2 and Capterra it has 4.2 out of 5, where people mostly rate the tools themselves.

The main complaints in 2026:

• Platinum going from $99 to $129 and the limits cut in April;
• charges after cancelling: accounts were "paused" instead of cancelled;
• annual renewals without warning and refused refunds;
• support that answers with a bot.

A practical tip: if you're buying for one month, cancel right after you finish your research, without waiting for the month to end, and check in Plans & Billing that it's actually cancelled.

Pros and cons for a KDP author

Pros:

• Cerebro is a strong keyword tool for a competitor's paperback: hundreds of search terms with search volume and suggested bids;
• Xray right on Amazon search results, for a quick read on a paperback niche;
• Keyword Tracker for any book, up to 500 keywords;
• discounts with promo codes VOVA10 and VOVA6M20.

Cons:

• nearly useless for Kindle: 1 keyword instead of 383;
• only 100 Cerebro searches a month on Platinum;
• Listing Analyzer doesn't support books;
• Profits, Alerts, and the search query report require Seller Central, and the ads tool is Diamond-only;
• keyword searches are cluttered with products, and Black Box is incomplete and inaccurate for books;
• expensive: $129 a month with no free trial and a 7-day refund window.

Helium 10 vs Publisher Rocket vs AuthorLens

Who should get Helium 10

You're choosing a niche for a paperback and want a deep keyword dig. Yes, for one month. Get Platinum with Vova's promo code, run 5–10 top-selling books through Cerebro, export the keywords, and cancel.

You sell ebooks. No: for Kindle, Cerebro shows almost nothing.

You sell both books and regular products on Amazon. Yes, products are what Helium 10 is built for.

Your books are out and you're running ads. Helium 10 won't be your main tool: it can't see your royalties or your ad spend. What you need here is analytics for your own money. What KDP and Amazon Ads reports leave out: KDP sales dashboard guide.

All 16 tools we compared, with prices, are in the best KDP tools.

What Helium 10 can't see

• Your money. Not your royalties, not your ad spend, not your profit per book.
• How your keywords perform in ads. Cerebro gives you a list, but it won't tell you which keyword burns your budget and which one sells.
• Kindle competitors. There's almost no data for ebooks.

AuthorLens answers these questions. It's analytics built only for Amazon KDP: net profit per book after ads, organic sales separate from ads, campaign suggestions with a dollar amount attached, and daily keyword rankings. We use AuthorLens daily and have a business relationship with it.