Problem

Consumer subscription apps depend on in-app paywalls and upsell flows to convert free users, but those experiences are often static and difficult to personalize. Improving conversion typically requires growth teams to identify user segments, design multiple variants, implement logic in code, wait for app releases, and analyze many experiments—work that can distract teams from building the core product. The economic pain is substantial because even small conversion gains increase subscription revenue from an existing user base; Helium cites a customer seeing a 40% conversion improvement from personalized copy.

The main use case is helping a mobile app optimize the paywalls shown at moments such as onboarding, app open, or feature discovery. Helium’s Locket case study reports that automated paywall testing helped increase subscription revenue by 77%, with Locket saying its first A/B test generated more than 15 times Helium’s cost.

Product / Service

Helium is a software platform for launching, managing, testing, and personalizing mobile paywalls without requiring repeated engineering work or App Store updates. Teams integrate an SDK, create paywalls and multi-step upsell flows in a visual editor, run A/B or multivariate experiments, segment users by attributes, and use analytics to measure conversion. It supports major mobile stacks including Swift, Kotlin, React Native, and Flutter, and can import designs from Figma or screenshots.

The delivery model combines self-serve software with higher-touch support for larger customers. Helium offers a free tier for up to 250 conversions per month, then charges per initial conversion, while its Growth plan includes custom analytics, localization, app-to-web functionality, early features, and help designing experiments. Its longer-term product vision is self-improving software that uses AI to generate and test new monetization experiences and select the best paywall for each user.

Market

Helium competes in mobile app monetization, particularly paywall optimization, subscription experimentation, and in-app upsell infrastructure. Its competitive set includes Superwall, which Helium explicitly contrasts itself with, as well as adjacent paywall and subscription platforms such as RevenueCat, Adapty, Qonversion, and Apphud. Helium’s differentiation is its emphasis on AI-assisted creation, personalization, and ongoing experimentation rather than only paywall configuration or subscription management.

The company is an active San Francisco startup founded in 2024 and backed by Y Combinator’s Summer 2024 batch; its website says it has raised $6 million. The available evidence does not establish total company revenue, but it demonstrates commercial traction: Helium says its first customer was a social app with 20 million monthly active users, and its published Locket case study reports more than a dozen tested paywalls and a 77% increase in subscription revenue. This indicates an early, customer-backed business rather than a purely pre-revenue concept, although its broader customer count and financial scale are not disclosed.