Helium 10 Review for Amazon Sellers

What is Helium 10?

Helium 10 is the largest of the Amazon seller platforms reviewed on this site, and its pricing page is built differently from the other two. The plans are not named after features but after your yearly Amazon sales: Platinum is published for sellers doing $0 to $100K a year, Diamond for $100K to $10M, and Enterprise for anything beyond $10M. Both billing bases are printed for the two self-serve plans — Platinum is $129 a month billed monthly or $99 a month billed annually, with the page stating a $360 saving, and Diamond is $359 or $279 with a stated $960 saving — under a toggle labelled "Pay yearly (save up to 20%)". Enterprise is the only tier without a published price, and even that carries a figure: $1,499 a month billed annually, labelled a starting price. Two things are easy to get wrong before you reach the comparison table. The first is that Helium 10 does publish a free plan with per-tool limits, even though the plan table itself lists three paid tiers and no free column; those limits are published on the vendor's own blog rather than on the pricing page. The second is that the subscription is not the whole bill: the managed refund service takes a percentage of what it recovers, and Helium 10 Ads takes a percentage of the ad spend it manages.

Pros and cons

Free plan and pricing

Free plan

There is a free plan, and it is not on the pricing page. The plan table lists three paid tiers — Platinum, Diamond and Enterprise — and no free column, and publishes no free-plan limits. The vendor's own blog post on membership plans does: "we offer a free plan that gives new users a taste of what we have to offer. This free trial is a limited, free version of most Helium 10 tools." That page itemises what it contains, and the allowances are demo-sized — Cerebro twice a day for up to 20 keywords, 5 Black Box uses, 10 Xray uses, 2 Listing Analyzer uses, 2 suggested Listing Builder searches a month, Alerts on 2 ASINs, and 30-day limits on Scribbles, the Keyword Processor, Inventory Management and Profits. The pricing page's own FAQ refers to it in passing — "Access is limited with the Free plan, but the Platinum plan and above plans include full access to the Chrome Extension" — and the account is not time-limited, so it is a plan rather than a trial. The practical point is that the free tier is a demonstration of the research tools rather than a way to run a business on Helium 10, so it tells you whether the interface suits you rather than whether the tool can carry your store.

• Permanent free account rather than a time-limited trial — the pricing page's FAQ describes it as free-to-use forever
• Cerebro: 2 searches a day, up to 20 keywords each
• Black Box: 5 uses
• Xray: 10 uses, and Xray for Walmart: 1,000 requests
• Listing Analyzer: 2 uses
• Listing Builder: 2 suggested searches a month, with no Amazon sync
• Alerts: 2 ASINs
• Scribbles, the Keyword Processor and Inventory Management: limited to 30 days
• Profits and Profits for Walmart: limited 30-day use
• Chrome Extension: free to download, but the pricing page's FAQ says full access needs Platinum or above

We check every free plan on this site by opening its signup page and reading the form. See which ecommerce tool free plans actually work for the full set of results side by side.

Plans

Pricing in detail

The pricing page publishes two self-serve plans on both billing bases plus an enterprise tier, and the ladder is keyed to your yearly Amazon sales rather than to features. Platinum covers $0–$100K, Diamond covers $100K–$10M and Enterprise is for sellers beyond $10M. Platinum is $129 a month billed monthly or $99 a month billed annually, which the page states as a $360 saving; Diamond is $359 or $279 with a stated $960 saving; and Enterprise is published as a starting price of $1,499 a month billed annually. The toggle above the cards is labelled "Pay yearly (save up to 20%)", which understates both: $129 falling to $99 is a cut of 23.3% and $359 falling to $279 is 22.3%, while both stated savings check out — $30 a month over twelve months is $360, and $80 a month over twelve months is $960. The vendor's blog gives the annual totals as $1,188 for Platinum and $3,348 for Diamond, which is the same arithmetic. What separates the two self-serve tiers is not a single ladder but two halves of the product. The research half scales: My products goes from 20 tracked ASINs to 1,000, the listing analyser from 50 uses a month to 150, influencer finder from 10 uses to 250 uses a day, the Amazon fraud detector from 5 products to 200, email follow-up from 5,000 to 15,000 emails, inventory management from 40 to 500 SKUs, and market tracker from 3 markets to 5. The operations half simply starts at Diamond: tracking keyword rankings over time, AI advertising, rules-based advertising, keyword recommendations, dayparting, the listing builder, Market Tracker 360 and Exit Ticket are all marked unavailable on Platinum, and the managed spend fee of 2% on PPC spend managed through Helium 10 Ads applies to Diamond rather than Platinum. The tracked ASIN figure is the one to read twice, because it is a lifetime allowance rather than a monthly quota: 20 products over the life of the account on Platinum. Two charges sit outside the subscription. The managed refund service is included on both tiers but takes 15% of what it recovers on Platinum and 10% on Diamond, and several features are sold as add-ons with published starting prices — the keyword tracker from $19 a month, Market Tracker 360 from $650 a month, the elite sellers group at $99 a month, and MCP from $50 a month. Seats and the plan lineup are where the vendor's own pages stop agreeing. The comparison table gives multi-user logins as 1 on Platinum and 5 on Diamond and connected Seller Central accounts as 2 and 10, while the FAQ on the same page says Platinum can add one user and Diamond up to five, and the vendor's blog says Platinum connects 2 accounts and Diamond 5. The blog also still lists a Starter plan starting at $49 a month, which the pricing page no longer shows. Every figure here comes from helium10.com; where its own pages disagree, the disagreement is reported rather than resolved.

Who should use Helium 10?

• Amazon sellers who want research, keyword tracking, listing optimisation, advertising and inventory in one subscription rather than four
• Sellers doing $100K to $10M a year, which is the band Diamond is published for and the first tier where rank tracking over time and ad automation appear
• Anyone who wants to test the interface before paying: the free plan is permanent and its limits are published in advance
• Sellers who will pay annually — Platinum falls from $129 to $99 a month, which the page states as a $360 saving
• Sellers who want the training included, since Freedom Ticket comes with Platinum and Diamond rather than costing $997 on its own

Who should avoid Helium 10?

• Sellers on Shopify, Etsy or WooCommerce, because the tools read Amazon data
• Anyone who needs more than a demonstration from a free tier: 5 Black Box uses and 10 Xray uses will not carry a product launch
• Small sellers who only need to check whether an existing product is worth buying, since SellerAmp does that from $19.95 a month
• Sellers who need advertising, rank tracking over time or the listing builder, because all of those start at Diamond at $279 a month billed annually
• Sellers who cannot commit to a year: the $99 entry price only applies on annual billing, and monthly is $129
• Anyone who needs a second user on the cheapest tier, because Platinum includes one login

Alternatives

If Helium 10 is not the right fit, compare these alternatives:

• Jungle Scout
• SellerAmp SAS
• All three Amazon product research tools compared

Final verdict

Helium 10 is the platform to choose when you want one subscription to cover research, keywords, listings, advertising and inventory, and the honest way to price it is to start at the top of the ladder rather than the bottom. Platinum is $99 a month billed annually, or $129 monthly, and it is a research tier: 20 tracked ASINs for the life of the account, 50 listing analyser uses a month, 40 SKUs of inventory, and no rank tracking over time, no ad automation, no dayparting and no listing builder. The tier where the operational half of the product appears is Diamond at $279 a month billed annually, and that is the figure to plan around if advertising or rank tracking is the reason you are looking. Two charges sit outside both: the managed refund service takes 15% of what it recovers on Platinum and 10% on Diamond, and Helium 10 Ads takes 2% of the ad spend it manages, which is a different pricing model from the flat subscription and the one most likely to surprise a new buyer. The free plan is real and its limits are published, but they are a demonstration rather than a working allowance — 5 Black Box uses and 10 Xray uses in total. Read against the other two Amazon tools on this site, Helium 10 is the broadest and the dearest: Jungle Scout starts at $29 a month billed annually and SellerAmp at $19.95, both of them far below Platinum. If your decision is which product to launch, Helium 10's breadth is the thing you are buying. If your decision is whether to buy a product you are already looking at, it is several times more tool than that job needs. Two details are worth confirming with the vendor before you pay: the seat counts, because the table, the FAQ and the blog give three different readings, and the plan lineup, because the vendor's own blog still advertises a Starter plan the pricing page no longer shows.

Frequently asked questions