Black Friday 2026 is Friday, November 27, and Cyber Monday is November 30. Before you fill a basket, here's what three years of Amazon prices say about whether the deals are real.
We tracked the daily Amazon price of 137 products across 14 categories (air purifiers, hair dryers, bedding, pickleball balls, pet supplies, odor eliminators and more) through Black Friday 2023, 2024 and 2025. That's 376 product checks. For each one, we compared the lowest price from the Friday before Black Friday through Cyber Monday against what the product usually cost from mid-September to late October.
The short answer
Sometimes, and less often than the ads suggest.
- 41% of products got a real discount (10% or more under their usual price) at some point during Black Friday week. 27% got 20% or more off.
- 52% barely moved. Their best Black Friday week price was less than 3% under normal.
- 8% were more expensive than their usual price, by 5% or more.
- When a product was cut, the typical cut was 21%.
So in any given year, it's close to a coin flip whether the thing you want will be on sale. When it is, the discount is usually worth having. Last year was the most generous of the three: 47% of products got a 10%+ cut in 2025, against 38% in both 2023 and 2024.
Which categories get real Black Friday discounts?
This is where the answer changes most. Air purifiers were cut in three out of four checks. Home office products were cut in about one in seven.
| Category | Checks | Got 10%+ off | Typical cut when cut | Hit a 12-month low |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air purifiers | 24 | 75% | 23% | 71% |
| Blackout curtains, sleep masks, sunrise clocks | 16 | 69% | 21% | 50% |
| Hair dryers | 11 | 64% | 30% | 82% |
| Cooling bedding and pillows | 56 | 54% | 21% | 43% |
| Clothes steamers | 12 | 50% | 19% | 33% |
| Snoring aids | 20 | 50% | 21% | 35% |
| Energy and fatigue (vitamins, lights) | 31 | 39% | 21% | 42% |
| Sleep and anxiety aids | 34 | 38% | 25% | 29% |
| White noise and earplugs | 25 | 36% | 20% | 36% |
| Kitchen odor eliminators | 31 | 36% | 20% | 48% |
| Blue light glasses and screen aids | 25 | 28% | 22% | 44% |
| Pickleball balls | 33 | 27% | 22% | 33% |
| Pet supplies | 45 | 22% | 20% | 47% |
| Home office | 13 | 15% | 22% | 54% |
"Checks" is products times years. A product we've tracked for all three Black Fridays counts three times. "Hit a 12-month low" means the Black Friday week price was within 2% of the lowest price in the six months either side.
If you're shopping for an air purifier or a hair dryer, Black Friday is worth waiting for. Our air purifier price guide goes model by model. If it's pet food, a chalkboard or a tube of pickleballs, the odds are against a meaningful saving, so buy when you need it.
The biggest drops we recorded
A few products got cut far deeper than the 21% typical figure:
| Product | Year | Usual price | Black Friday week low | Cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franklin X-40 outdoor pickleballs, 12-pack | 2024 | $31.49 | $11.99 | 62% |
| Elegear cooling blanket, queen | 2025 | $52.99 | $30.73 | 42% |
| Rowenta X-Cel handheld steamer | 2024 | $76.89 | $44.99 | 41% |
| Coway Airmega air purifier (up to 810 sq ft) | 2024 | $129.99 | $76.99 | 41% |
| Coway air purifier (up to 1,748 sq ft) | 2023 | $229.99 | $139.99 | 39% |
Some of these repeat and some don't. The larger Coway purifier hit $140 to $143 on all three Black Fridays, so that's close to a reliable Black Friday price. The Franklin X-40 12-pack was a one-off: no real cut in 2023, 62% off in 2024, and just under 10% off in 2025. Treat last year's best price as a hint, not a promise.
Is Black Friday or Cyber Monday better on Amazon?
It almost never matters. In 86% of our checks, the product cost exactly the same on Black Friday as on Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday was cheaper 7.2% of the time and Black Friday 6.9% of the time.
Narrowing it to products that actually got a discount doesn't change much. 79% were the same price on both days, Cyber Monday won 12% of the time and Black Friday 9%.
Amazon runs one sale from before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, and most deal prices hold for the whole stretch. There's no reason to hold off until Monday hoping for a deeper cut, or to panic-buy on Friday. The exceptions are Lightning Deals and items that sell out at the deal price.
Does Amazon raise prices before Black Friday?
This is the most common worry, and the data mostly doesn't back it up.
Only 12% of our checks (44 of 376) showed a price rising 5% or more in the two weeks before Black Friday. And the classic trick, where the price goes up and then gets "discounted" back to roughly where it was, was rare. Of those 44, only 8 went on to a real 10%+ cut on Black Friday week. Most simply stayed at the higher price through the sale.
Our two-week test can miss slower moves, though. The Sobakawa buckwheat pillow sold for $29.99 around Black Friday 2023 and 2024. By fall 2025 it was about $58, and the 2025 Black Friday "deal" brought it back to $29.99. On paper that's 48% off; in practice it was the old price. That's why a longer price history beats any single "was" price.
The opposite was more than twice as common. 27% of products were already 5% or more cheaper in the two weeks before Black Friday, because the early deals had started.
None of that rules out a misleading "was" price. The strikethrough price Amazon shows is often a list price or a 30-day figure, not what the product has typically sold for. The fix is to look at the price history yourself before buying (see the checklist below).
Should you buy early Black Friday deals or wait?
If the early price is already a real discount, buy it. Of the products that were 5%+ cheaper in the two weeks before Black Friday, 70% didn't get meaningfully cheaper on the day. The early deal usually was the Black Friday deal.
Counting the early days matters for the headline numbers too. Our wider study, which only looked at Black Friday through Cyber Monday, found a 10%+ cut 31.6% of the time. Starting the clock a week earlier, on the Friday before, raises that to 41%. A good share of Black Friday discounts show up before Black Friday.
Is the Black Friday price the lowest price of the year?
For the products that got a real cut, usually yes. 65% hit a price within 2% of their lowest in the surrounding 12 months. That's the strongest argument for Black Friday: when a discount happens, it tends to be the best one you'll see.
It isn't guaranteed. 26% of discounted products were cheaper again, by more than 2%, at some point in the following six months. Most of those later lows came between February and April.
Do Black Friday prices stay low after Cyber Monday?
Mostly not. Two to four weeks after Cyber Monday, the median product was back to its usual price. Of the products that got a 10%+ cut, 28% were still 10% or more off in mid-December. If you miss a deal, it's worth checking again before Christmas, but don't count on it.
How to tell if a Black Friday deal is real
- Ignore the strikethrough price. It's often a list price nobody pays. What matters is the price the product has actually sold at over the last few months.
- Check the price history. Keepa and CamelCamelCamel both show Amazon price charts for free. The product pages on this site show recent price history too.
- Compare with the 90-day low. If the "deal" price matches a price it hit in September or October, it isn't a Black Friday deal. It's a normal price with a badge on it.
- Know your category. Air purifiers, hair dryers and bedding are cut often. Pet supplies, home office products and everyday consumables rarely are.
- Buy early if the price is right. If it's already at or near its lowest recorded price the week before, waiting rarely gets you a better one.
- Check after Cyber Monday too. About a quarter of real discounts were still running into mid-December.
How we measured this
We used Keepa's record of each product's Amazon price, falling back to the lowest new-condition price when Amazon itself wasn't selling the product. Prices were filled forward day by day from each recorded change.
- Usual price: the median price from 75 to 31 days before Black Friday (roughly mid-September to late October). That window avoids early holiday deals and Prime Big Deal Days distortions as much as possible.
- Black Friday week price: the lowest price from the Friday before Black Friday through Cyber Monday.
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday prices: the price at the end of each day.
- Products: 137 products featured in our buying guides, with at least a year of price history around each Black Friday. Not every product had data for every year, which is why there are 376 checks rather than 411.
The data is public prices only. Prime-exclusive prices, clipped coupons and Subscribe & Save discounts aren't included, so some shoppers will have paid less than shown. The 137 products are the ones in our guides, not a random sample of everything on Amazon, so treat the category figures as a guide for those kinds of products rather than for Amazon as a whole.
For Prime Day, October deal days and the cheapest month in each category, see our three-year Amazon price study.
Frequently asked questions
Are Amazon Black Friday deals worth it?
For some categories, yes. Across 137 products and three Black Fridays, 41% got a discount of 10% or more during Black Friday week, with a typical cut of 21%. But 52% barely moved, and 8% cost more than usual. Air purifiers and hair dryers were discounted most often. Pet supplies and home office products rarely were.
Is Black Friday or Cyber Monday better on Amazon?
Neither, in most cases. In 86% of our checks, the price on Black Friday and on Cyber Monday was identical. Cyber Monday was cheaper 7.2% of the time and Black Friday 6.9% of the time, so there's no reason to wait for one over the other.
Does Amazon raise prices before Black Friday?
Rarely, in our data. Only 12% of products went up 5% or more in the two weeks before Black Friday, and only 8 of those 44 cases were followed by a real discount. It was more common for prices to drop early: 27% were already 5% or more cheaper in the two weeks before.
Should I buy early Black Friday deals or wait?
Buy if the early price is already a real discount. Of the products that were 5%+ cheaper in the two weeks before Black Friday, 70% didn't get meaningfully cheaper on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
When is Black Friday 2026 on Amazon?
Black Friday 2026 is Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday is November 30. Amazon usually starts its Black Friday deals about a week before the day itself, which is why we count the Friday before in our figures.
Do Black Friday prices come back in December?
Sometimes. Of the products with a real Black Friday cut, 28% were still 10% or more under their usual price two to four weeks after Cyber Monday. Most were back to normal by mid-December.
