Of all the software tools I use in my Amazon FBA business, the one I use the most, and get the most value out of, is Keepa.
I spend a lot of time using this tool, looking at hundreds of Keepa charts per week. Given its importance to my business, I want to share what it is, why it’s such a great tool, and how I use it for product research for my Amazon FBA business.
What is Keepa?
Keepa shows charts of individual products’ Amazon price history, Best Seller Rank, review & rating history, and more. It also allows users to track prices of products on Amazon and receive price drop alerts.
The screenshot below shows a Keepa chart with:
- Price history and sales rank history on top
- Another sales rank history chart in the middle, showing sub-category rank history of a product
- And the rating history (teal), review history (lime), and number of sellers history chart on bottom (blue)
Is Keepa Worth It?
For my Amazon business, Keepa is the most important tool I use, so Keepa is definitely worth paying for.
I’ve used Keepa for several years, and the sales rank history charts alone have helped my profitability and inventory turnover rate tremendously. Keepa has shown me products to buy that will sell well, and also products to avoid that won’t sell well, and it’s done this many, MANY, times. This one feature has easily made thousands in profit and avoided thousands in losses for my business.
Now that we know Keepa is worth it, let’s take a closer look at what a Keepa chart looks like, how it shows information, and how I use Keepa in my research process.
Anatomy of a Keepa Chart
The Top Chart: Best Seller Rank History & Price History
This chart has 5 different elements shown in 5 different colors, all of which are useful when doing product research. They are:
- Amazon’s price, the orange shaded area
- Sales rank history, as a green line
- Buy Box price, as a pink line
- New 3rd party sellers price, as a blue line
- Used 3rd party sellers price, as a black line
I’ll break down each element below.
Orange: Amazon’s Price
The most obvious feature in the top chart is the shaded orange area. This represents that Amazon actively sells this product, so at a glance I can tell Amazon has been a seller of this product for the entire duration this chart is displaying, which is 1 year.
The very top edge of the orange shaded area represents the price Amazon is selling the product at, so when the orange area goes up, Amazon’s price goes up, and when the orange area goes down, Amazon’s price goes down. The left axis displays the range for Amazon’s price.
Green: Best Seller Rank
The next, and most important feature when making buy or don’t-buy decisions, is the green line, which represents the product’s Best Seller Rank history, also called the sales rank history.
When looking for a product that sells well, you want to see lots of movement in the green line. You also want the sales rank value, on the right axis on this chart, from 400,000 at the top, to 100,000 near the bottom, to be as low as possible.
Since this particular chart is for a book, this is a book I would buy for resale, because its rank often goes below 100,000, which is pretty good for a book.
Pink: Buy Box Price
The pink line shows the Buy Box price history. Since it overlays with the top of the orange shaded area, you can tell at a glance that Amazon has likely had the Buy Box for this product over the course of this entire chart.
Blue: 3rd Party Seller New Price
The blue line shows other sellers New price history for this product. On the chart above, you can see 3rd party sellers New price has been below Amazon’s price for most of the duration of the chart.
Black: 3rd Party Seller Used Price
The black line shows the Used price of 3rd party sellers. This may or may not be significant depending on whether or not this product has a lot of used sellers. Since this is a chart for a book, and books typically have lots of used offers, it can be helpful to know where sellers are setting the price for a used copy of the book.
Note that there are other elements you can activate on this chart, including the list price, FBM seller prices, and a breakout of each used condition price. I personally don’t get a lot of value from these elements, which is why I don’t have them active on the charts I review.
The Middle Chart: Sub-category Best Seller Rank History Chart
This chart is the least important in my research, since I’m not usually interested in a product’s sub-category Best Seller Rank. I include it here just so you know it exists, but it’s not something I focus on, so let’s move onto the more-useful bottom chart.
The Bottom Chart: Rating History, Review History, and Number of Sellers History
The bottom chart shows 3 elements:
- Ratings (teal line)
- Reviews (lime line)
- Number of Sellers (blue line)
You can see the axis vertically on the left has scales for rating and the review count, and vertically on the right for number of sellers.
How I Use Keepa in My Research Process
Since your top priorities when researching products to sell on Amazon are:
- How quickly does a product sell?
- What price can I sell a product for?
Then the top chart, with the charts showing price history and Best Seller Rank history, is the most important in my research. Since I need to do product research as quickly as possible to free up time for other tasks, having this chart give you this information at a glance is very valuable.
The Top Chart: Price History and Best Seller Rank History Chart
For example, this chart above shows a book’s history, and since a Best Seller Rank below 200,000 is pretty good for a book, and the green line is mostly below 200,000, I would be interested in buying this book just based on the green Best Seller Rank history line alone.
Seeing lots of vertical movement in the green Best Seller Rank history line means it’s selling regularly, which is what you want to see in any product you want to sell on Amazon. This contrasts with a product that doesn’t sell regularly, where the green line is smooth with only shows a little vertical movement, as shown below.
The Bottom Chart: Rating History, Review History, and Number of Sellers History
The bottom chart shows the ratings, reviews, and number of sellers of a product over time.
This chart is useful for a number of things, such as:
- Seeing how fast a product accumulates reviews
- Seeing how the rating for the product has gone up and down over time
- Seeing how many sellers has sold the product in the past
Let’s talk about why each of these things is worth knowing.
How Fast a Product Accumulates Reviews
The review count, shown in the lime-colored line, can be used as a proxy for demand in the case where Amazon doesn’t track Best Seller Rank, which happens regularly in certain product categories like the Electronics category. It’s a proxy for demand because if the review count is increasing, that means people are regularly buying the product, because most people only leave a review for a product they’ve purchased.
Therefore, if you need confirmation that a product sells well beyond what the Best Seller Rank (top) chart shows you, the review count can confirm this for you.
How the Rating Has Gone Up or Down Over Time
Since it’s important to sell products that people are happy with, it’s good to know how a product’s rating has changed over time.
For a product that hasn’t been for sale on Amazon for very long, you’ll be able to see customer’s reaction to the product based on the first several ratings. For products with a longer sales history, you can see if people are as happy with the product today as compared to the past.
I tend not to sell products with a rating below 4, because lower-rated products tend to generate more customer complaints and have higher return rates than higher-rated products. Therefore, seeing a history of how the ratings have gone up or down helps me avoid products that customers don’t like.
Number of Past Sellers
Knowing the number of sellers of a product has a very specific application. The number of sellers helps determine if a product is someone’s private label product, or if it’s more widely sold through distributors or other wholesale channels.
Since I buy products from liquidators, one of the risks I face is unknowingly buying a product another seller has trademarked or has otherwise instructed Amazon that no one else is allowed to sell it on Amazon.
By using Keepa to evaluate the products the liquidator has available, I avoid getting into trouble with other sellers and with Amazon by avoiding products with a history of only 1 seller. While it’s not a guarantee a product with only 1 seller is restricted, it’s the best way I’ve found to avoid products that could cause me issues if I try to sell it.
What are Some Other Benefits of Keepa?
There are other benefits of Keepa, which include:
- Price Tracker
- Drops Statistic
Let’s review each of these.
Keepa Price Tracker
Keepa allows you to track prices for products on Amazon. This is helpful if you are trying to stay informed about the latest prices for a product, whether the price goes up or down.
To track a product, click the “Track product” tab, fill in the price parameters, select your time range to track for, and click “Start Tracking”.
Keepa has a short video about how their price tracker works here.
Drops Statistic
Keepa provides you with a numerical approximation of how often a product sells every month, in the form of its “drops” statistic. You can see the drops count is 58, circled in red in the picture below.
It’s important to note the drops statistic is only an approximation of monthly sales. The product in the picture above, with 58 drops, likely didn’t sell exactly 58 units in a month, but it was probably close.
Also, since you won’t capture every sale of a product on Amazon because of offers from competing sellers, you shouldn’t use the drops count as your expected sales per month.
How Much Does Keepa Cost?
A yearly subscription for Keepa costs 189 € Euros, which is about $192 US dollars.
If you don’t pay for the subscription, you don’t get access to Best Seller Rank history chart, rating history, review count history, and several other pieces of data.
Since the Best Seller Rank history chart is the most valuable information Keepa provides, you need to pay for Keepa to make it worth it.
Below is a comparison chart from Keepa showing the feature differences between a free and paid account. You can also find this page here.
How Do You Get Started With Keepa?
There are 2 different ways that you can get started with Keepa. The first way is to simply go to the Keepa website and sign up for a free account. This will give you access to the basic features of Keepa, including the ability to track your own prices and set up price alerts.
The other way to get started, and how you get the most out of Keepa, is to pay for the subscription. A subscription gives you access to the best features, including the most-important charts showing Best Seller Rank history and price history.
Once you’ve signed up, you’ll want to install the Keepa browser extension in whichever browser you use. This integrates Keepa charts with your browser, and having the Keepa chart appear on the Amazon product page is a huge time-saver, easy to do, and it’s sped up my research process a lot.
From the Keepa home page, click on the “Apps” icon at the top, and choose your browser, as shown in the picture below.
Once the browser extension is installed, the next time you load an Amazon product page, the Keepa chart will load just below the picture and product details at the top of the page!
Wrapping It Up
As you can see, I have a pretty high opinion of Keepa. It’s the most important software tool I use for my Amazon business, and it’s made and saved me TONS of money, so it’s easy to recommend.
Not only would I recommend it, but depending on how you source products to sell on Amazon, a tool like Keepa is almost a requirement to efficiently make buy or don’t-buy decisions for products you’re researching.
Further Reading
Interested in learning more about my Amazon business? This post explains how my business has evolved since I started selling on Amazon in 2015.
Want to learn more about Best Seller Rank and why it’s so important to selling on Amazon? See this post.