Only one CEH study guide from a major publisher has v13, the current Certified Ethical Hacker version, in its title. It also reuses the chapter list of the book before it. Sybex’s CEH v13 study guide keeps the same 15 chapter titles as its v12 guide, and its index points to about eight pages on the AI material EC-Council now headlines, spread across three chapters. That does not make it a bad buy, but you should know what you are paying for before you pick it over Matt Walker’s O’Reilly guide or the cheaper v11 and v12 books.
Below are six CEH books and study guides, ranked: four for the CEH exam and two hands-on hacking books that fill the gaps study guides leave. Each pick names the CEH version it was written for and who should pass on it. The last section maps the main editions to their CEH versions. Editions, page counts, stock and prices were checked against Amazon’s catalog and the publishers’ own pages in October 2026.
Pick a CEH book by where you are
Most candidates need one study guide and, if their Linux is rusty, one hands-on book. Start from where you stand today:
- Sitting CEH v13 soon: CEH v13 Study Guide (William Panek, Sybex)
- Want a shorter read with a different voice: Certified Ethical Hacker Study Guide (Matt Walker, O’Reilly)
- Want the v13 guide’s structure for less: CEH v12 Study Guide (Ric Messier, Sybex)
- Want the most practice questions per dollar: CEH Bundle, Fifth Edition (Matt Walker, McGraw Hill)
- Weak on the Linux command line: Linux Basics for Hackers, 2nd Edition
- Want to actually break things in a lab: Ethical Hacking (Daniel G. Graham, No Starch)
If you are still deciding between CEH and a hands-on certification, compare this list with our OSCP book picks and the PenTest+ study guides. OSCP in particular is a hands-on practical exam, so the books that prepare you for it read very differently.
Know what the CEH v13 exam tests
CEH is on version 13, which EC-Council now markets as “CEH AI”, and its exam code is still 312-50. The knowledge exam is 125 multiple-choice questions in four hours. A separate, optional practical exam gives you six hours for 20 hands-on challenges, and passing both earns the CEH Master title. EC-Council says it paces new CEH versions every 12 to 18 months, which is why the version printed on a study guide matters more here than it does for most certifications.
The official course behind v13 runs 20 modules, from footprinting and scanning through session hijacking, web servers and applications, SQL injection, wireless, mobile, IoT and OT, cloud computing and cryptography. EC-Council folds AI-assisted techniques into the five phases of ethical hacking rather than giving them a module of their own. EC-Council lists three ways to qualify for the CEH exam:
- after official EC-Council training (iClass, an accredited training center or an academic partner)
- by applying with at least two years of information security work experience, which carries a non-refundable $100 application fee
- by holding a legacy CEH v1 to v7 certification, which waives that application fee
Candidates who skip official training take the experience route, because it does not require the official course. That is also why the study guide carries so much weight: EC-Council’s eCourseware ships with its training packages, so a self-study candidate’s book has to do that job instead.
How we chose these books
We started from Amazon’s catalog, not from memory, and the catalog is crowded. Amazon’s catalog search for “CEH v13” returned 66 results when we checked, and most of the ones we looked through are independently published exam-prep titles from authors with no track record we could find. A book made this list only if it cleared three bars:
- an established technical publisher (Sybex, O’Reilly, McGraw Hill, No Starch)
- a named author with a security or training background
- a new copy in stock on Amazon when we checked
Stock and format removed four well-known titles. The CEH All-in-One Exam Guide, Fifth Edition paperback and Pearson’s CEH Cert Guide, Fourth Edition were both only offered as used copies in Amazon’s buy box when we checked (the All-in-One is still sold new as a Kindle ebook). Pearson’s newer CEH Cert Guide, Fifth Edition by Omar Santos and Michael Gregg, published in August 2025, is an ebook only on Amazon US. Pearson’s product page says it prepares you for a “CEH v15” exam, a version EC-Council has not released, so we could not tell which objectives it maps to. Packt’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) v12 312-50 Exam Guide by Dale Meredith is in stock new. It targets the same v12 objectives as the Sybex v12 guide, though, and cost more when we checked. None of the four is a numbered pick. We did not read every book cover to cover. Each pick was judged on its table of contents, the publisher’s own description and the practice material listed on its cover, then the edition, page count and price were checked against Amazon’s data on the day we wrote this. Star ratings are not quoted because Amazon’s product data does not return them reliably.
Compare the CEH books side by side
Read the “Written for” column first, because the CEH version a book targets ages it faster than anything else. Prices move often, so treat these as what Amazon charged when we checked:
| Book | Written for | Pages | Practice material | Published | Price (Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CEH v13 Study Guide (Sybex) | CEH v13 | 752 | 800 online questions, 125 flashcards | May 2026 | ~$48 |
| Certified Ethical Hacker Study Guide (O’Reilly) | Not stated by the publisher | 480 | Not stated by the publisher | Aug 2025 | ~$44 |
| CEH v12 Study Guide (Sybex) | CEH v12 | 768 | 750 online questions, 100 flashcards | May 2023 | ~$37 |
| CEH Bundle, Fifth Edition (McGraw Hill) | CEH v11 | Two books | More than 900 questions in all | Jul 2022 | ~$23 |
| Linux Basics for Hackers, 2nd Ed. | Not exam prep | 264 | None | 2025 | ~$17 |
| Ethical Hacking (No Starch) | Not exam prep | 376 | Hands-on labs | 2021 | ~$36 |
1. CEH Certified Ethical Hacker v13 Study Guide
Buy this one if your CEH exam is on v13, because it is the only study guide from a major publisher with v13 in its title. The v11 and v12 Sybex guides were Ric Messier’s. This one, published in May 2026, is by William Panek, a five-time Microsoft MVP who has trained personnel for the US Secret Service, Air Force and Army.
Its 752 pages run in 15 chapters. They start with ethical hacking and networking foundations, work through footprinting, scanning, enumeration, system hacking, malware, sniffing, social engineering and wireless, and close on cryptography, security architecture, cloud and the Internet of Things. Every chapter ends with review questions and Exam Essentials, and the online platform hosts 800 practice questions (the cover’s total), 125 flashcards and a searchable glossary, with one year of access after activation.
Read the table of contents next to the v12 guide and you will see the same 15 chapter titles in the same order. The index shows where v13 changed things: artificial intelligence gets its own entries under enumeration (pages 269 to 270), system hacking (329 to 332) and malware (352 to 353). That is roughly eight pages, so if you chose CEH for the “AI” branding, plan on EC-Council’s own material for that part.
Pass on it if you already own the v12 guide and only want the AI delta, since most of the book will be familiar. Amazon sold it new at about $48 to $63 when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
2. Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Study Guide
Matt Walker wrote the fourth and fifth editions of McGraw Hill’s CEH All-in-One Exam Guide, and this August 2025 O’Reilly title, subtitled “In-Depth Guidance and Practice”, is his newest CEH book. At 480 pages it is the shortest study guide here, and O’Reilly pitches it as exam prep you’ll actually enjoy, which suits readers who stall on dense reference books.
O’Reilly’s topic list covers information security and ethical hacking fundamentals, reconnaissance, system hacking phases, network and perimeter hacking, web application and wireless hacking, mobile, IoT and OT hacking, cloud computing, cryptography and penetration testing techniques. Walker has more than 20 years in IT security and education, and the publisher aims the book at penetration testers, cybersecurity engineers and analysts who want to get up to speed.
Look elsewhere if you need a book that states its CEH version on the cover. O’Reilly’s description does not name one, and it gives no practice-question count either, so pair it with a question bank. Stock was limited when we checked, at about $44 to $66 new. Check the current price on Amazon.
3. CEH v12 Certified Ethical Hacker Study Guide with 750 Practice Test Questions
Ric Messier’s v12 guide is the one whose chapter structure the v13 guide keeps, and it is still on sale new for less. Sybex merged the older two-book set (study guide plus a separate practice-test book) into this single 768-page volume, published in May 2023.
Messier’s chapter list matches the v13 book, from ethical hacking and networking foundations to cloud and IoT. The first chapter alone walks through attack modeling, the Cyber Kill Chain, MITRE ATT&CK and the five phases of ethical hacking. The cover lists 750 online practice questions and 100 flashcards. Messier holds the CEH, GSEC and CISSP, which shows in how much of the first chapter goes on attack frameworks before any tool appears.
Hold off if your test date is close and you are sitting v13, because this book was written to the v12 objectives and predates the AI sections. As a fundamentals book, or as a second question bank next to the v13 guide, it is good value at about $37 to $58 new when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
4. CEH Certified Ethical Hacker Bundle, Fifth Edition
McGraw Hill’s set packs the CEH All-in-One Exam Guide, Fifth Edition and CEH Practice Exams, Fifth Edition into one product with an online test engine. McGraw Hill puts the total at more than 900 questions with answer explanations, and the test engine builds full-length practice exams or quizzes by chapter or domain.
Both books are Walker’s, and both were written to the CEH v11 objectives, covering v11’s nine domains and the five phases of ethical hacking. That makes the bundle two versions behind. It’s still here for two reasons: by the publishers’ counts it carries the largest question pool on this list, and it’s the easiest way to get Walker’s All-in-One in print new, since the standalone Fifth Edition paperback was only offered used when we checked.
It is the wrong buy if you want one book that matches v13 line by line. A third-party seller held the buy box with limited stock at about $23 (list $60) when we checked, so seller and delivery time may differ when you look. Check the current price on Amazon.
5. Linux Basics for Hackers, 2nd Edition
CEH study guides assume you can already drive a Linux shell. The Sybex v13 index alone runs from aireplay-ng and airmon-ng to nmap scripts, and a candidate who cannot yet pipe, grep and edit a config file loses hours to the tooling instead of the attack. OccupyTheWeb’s book teaches that layer, using Kali Linux in a virtual machine.
Its 18 chapters cover text manipulation, networking, permissions, processes, Bash scripting, logging, services, wireless inspection, kernel modules, job scheduling and Python scripting. This second edition updates the Kali material, takes a safer approach to root privileges, updates its Bluetooth and logging material and adds a new chapter on AI for hackers. Once you are comfortable, our guides to network scanning with Nmap and installing Metasploit on Kali let you rehearse the scanning and exploitation chapters of any CEH guide.
Not for you if you already work in a Linux terminal daily, since the first half will feel slow. It is also not exam prep and has no practice questions. When we checked it was the best-selling book on this list by a wide margin (Amazon sales rank around 13,000, against about 256,000 for the v13 study guide), at about $17 to $40. Check the current price on Amazon.
6. Ethical Hacking: A Hands-on Introduction to Breaking In
The CEH exam asks what an attack does, while Daniel G. Graham’s book makes you build it. Graham is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Virginia and a former Microsoft program manager. The book reads like a lab course, built around a virtual lab you set up in the first chapter.
Graham splits the 376 pages into five parts. Most chapters run in the virtual lab from chapter 1, and the Windows chapter has you build a separate Windows lab:
- network fundamentals: ARP spoofing, Wireshark, TCP shells and botnets
- cryptography: ransomware in Python, TLS and Diffie-Hellman
- social engineering: phishing, deepfakes and target scanning
- exploitation: fuzzing for zero-days, trojans, Linux rootkits, password cracking, XSS
- controlling the network: pivoting, privilege escalation, corporate Windows networks
Along the way you deploy Metasploit reverse shells and capture Windows passwords with Mimikatz, which is closer to real engagement work than any multiple-choice question gets. Those labs line up with our walkthroughs on web app pentesting with DVWA and Linux privilege escalation if you want a second take on the same skills.
Leave it on the shelf if you only want to pass a multiple-choice test, because it isn’t mapped to any CEH version and it was published in 2021. Amazon’s listing was from a third-party seller with a delivery date when we checked, at about $36 to $50, so compare offers. Check the current price on Amazon.
Match your CEH version to the right book
Plenty of readers arrive here searching for a CEH v10, v11 or v12 book, usually because a training provider or an older forum thread named one. EC-Council’s current program is v13. Older books still teach most of the same attacks, so they are fine as a cheap second source, but buy your main study guide for the version you will actually sit. Here is where each edition lands:
| CEH version | Books written for it | Buy it today? |
|---|---|---|
| v13 (current) | CEH v13 Study Guide, Panek (Sybex, 2026) | Yes, as your main guide |
| Not stated | Certified Ethical Hacker Study Guide, Walker (O’Reilly, 2025) | Yes, as a second explainer |
| Unclear (page says “v15”) | CEH Cert Guide 5th Ed., Santos and Gregg (Pearson, 2025, ebook) | Only after checking its objectives |
| v12 | CEH v12 Study Guide, Messier (Sybex, 2023) | Only as a budget fundamentals book |
| v12 | Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) v12 312-50 Exam Guide, Meredith (Packt, 2022) | Only if you prefer it to the Sybex v12 guide |
| v11 | All-in-One Exam Guide 5th Ed. and Practice Exams 5th Ed., Walker (McGraw Hill, 2021-2022), sold together as the Bundle | Only for the bundle’s question pool |
| v11 | CEH v11 Study Guide, Messier (Sybex, 2021) | No, the v12 guide replaces it |
| v11 | CEH Cert Guide 4th Ed., Gregg and Santos (Pearson, 2022) | No, used copies only when we checked |
| v10 | All-in-One Exam Guide 4th Ed., Walker (McGraw Hill, 2019) | No |
For a v13 candidate the plan is simple: the Panek guide as the spine, its 800 online questions as the first practice pool, and the McGraw Hill bundle only if you burn through those. Add Linux Basics for Hackers first if the shell slows you down. If you are weighing CEH against a broader security credential, our Security+ book guide and CISSP study picks cover those two paths the same way.
