diff --git a/packages/cli/src/options/beaconNodeOptions/chain.ts b/packages/cli/src/options/beaconNodeOptions/chain.ts
index eb64e7bce246..bd2c42e21d1b 100644
--- a/packages/cli/src/options/beaconNodeOptions/chain.ts
+++ b/packages/cli/src/options/beaconNodeOptions/chain.ts
@@ -98,7 +98,9 @@ export const options: CliCommandOptions<ChainArgs> = {
 
   serveHistoricalState: {
     description:
-      "Enable regenerating finalized state to serve historical data. Fetching this data is expensive and may affect validator performance.",
+      "Regenerate finalized beacon states on demand and serve them via the REST API (e.g. `/eth/v2/debug/beacon/states/{state_id}`). \
+Does not backfill historical data, only states the node already has (since genesis sync or `--checkpointState`) can be regenerated. \
+Regeneration cost depends on `--chain.archiveStateEpochFrequency` and may affect validator performance.",
     type: "boolean",
     default: defaultOptions.chain.serveHistoricalState,
     group: "chain",
@@ -315,7 +317,10 @@ Will double processing times. Use only for debugging purposes.",
   },
 
   "chain.pruneHistory": {
-    description: "Prune historical blocks and state",
+    description:
+      "Continually prune finalized blocks older than `MIN_EPOCHS_FOR_BLOCK_REQUESTS` (33024 epochs / ~5 months on mainnet) and all archived states before the finalized epoch. \
+This is useful to minimize disk usage when the node does not need to serve historical data. \
+Initial pruning may be slow on first startup with an existing large database.",
     type: "boolean",
     default: defaultOptions.chain.pruneHistory,
     group: "chain",