Across 141 products we tracked daily for three years, a product's price fell 10% or more over Black Friday-Cyber Monday 32% of the time. Prime Day and October's Prime Big Deal Days managed 9% each. November is the cheapest month for more categories than any other, while pet, home office and kitchen odor products were on sale under 5% of days.
That's the short version. The rest of this page is the detail: how each sale event did, which months run cheap or dear in each category, and what to do with that when you're about to buy something. If you're shopping for an air purifier specifically, we broke that category down model by model in when are air purifiers cheapest.
Which Amazon sale actually cuts prices the most?
We looked at seven sale events between October 2023 and October 2026: two Prime Days (July 2024 and July 2025), three Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekends (2023, 2024 and 2025) and two October Prime Big Deal Days (2024 and 2025). For each product at each event, we compared the lowest price during the event with the median price over the 30 days before it.
| Sale event | Product-event checks | Cut 10% or more | Median cut, when cut | No drop at all |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black Friday-Cyber Monday | 383 | 31.6% | 21.0% | 58% |
| Prime Day (July) | 259 | 8.9% | 18.3% | 81% |
| Prime Big Deal Days (October) | 265 | 9.1% | 15.0% | 83% |
The gap is bigger than we expected. Black Friday-Cyber Monday produced a 10%+ cut about three and a half times as often as either Prime event. And the most common result at both Prime events was nothing: for roughly four in five products, the event price was no lower than the month before.
One caveat runs through all of this, and it matters most for Prime Day. We record the public price. Prime member-only deal prices, clipped coupons and Subscribe & Save aren't in the data, and Prime Day leans on exactly those. So if you're a Prime member, Prime Day was probably a bit better for you than these numbers suggest. How much better, we can't say from this data.
Prime Day vs Black Friday: which is cheaper?
For the products we track, Black Friday wins in 13 of 14 categories on how often prices drop 10% or more. The exception is home office (chalkboards and menu boards), where Prime Day cut one product in nine and Black Friday cut none, out of 9 and 14 checks. That's a tiny sample and shouldn't steer anyone.
Air purifiers came closest to a tie. Prime Day cut 35% of air purifier checks by 10%+ (median cut 22.1%), not far behind Black Friday-Cyber Monday's 52% (median 29.0%). If you need one in summer, Prime Day is a reasonable time to buy. Most other categories weren't close. Blackout curtains and sleep lighting got a 10%+ cut at 60% of Black Friday checks and 0% at Prime Day. Pet products: 11% against 0%. Hair dryers: 67% against 17%.
The cuts were deeper on Black Friday too, though less dramatically: 21.0% at the median versus 18.3% at Prime Day.
Is Prime Big Deal Days in October worth it?
On public prices, October was the weakest of the three events. It cut prices 10%+ 9.1% of the time, and the median cut when it did was 15.0%, the smallest of the three. In 83% of product checks the price didn't move down at all.
There were exceptions. Clothes steamers got 10%+ cuts at 22% of October checks. The Kindle Paperwhite hit its three-year low of $124.99 on October 7, 2025, the first of that year's deal days, and October beat Prime Day for the book light and Kindle group overall (12% of checks against 0%).
For most things, though, if you're looking at a deal in early October and it isn't clearly below the product's usual price, Black Friday is about seven weeks away and has done far better in our data.
What month are things cheapest on Amazon?
November. It's the cheapest month in 6 of our 14 categories (air purifiers, cooling bedding, blackout curtains and sleep lights, white noise machines, snoring aids, and energy and fatigue products). December is cheapest for two more, clothes steamers and hair dryers.
The more useful number is when each product hit its lowest price of the whole three years. For 44 of the 138 distinct products, that low came in November, and 39 of those fell between November 14 and November 30. No other month came close. October had 14, but six of those are just the first day of our data, which tells you nothing. July had 5. Not one product hit its three-year low inside a Prime Day window. Eight hit it during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend itself; many of the rest got there a week or two earlier, and some stayed at that price into the weekend (we date a low by the first day it appeared).
Here's the part that surprises people. Averaged over a whole month, prices barely move. Across all products, the November average was 98.9% of the typical price, so about 1.1% cheaper. Every other month sat between 99.2% and 100.1%. The savings happen on particular days and weeks, not across a month, which is why "buy in November" is less precise advice than "watch prices from mid-November."
| Category | Products | Days on sale (10%+ off) | Cheapest month (index) | Dearest month | Black Friday-CM: cut 10%+ (median cut) | Prime Day: cut 10%+ | October deal days: cut 10%+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air purifiers | 10 | 19.4% | November (97.7) | June | 52% (29.0%) | 35% (22.1%) | 29% (16.5%) |
| Cooling bedding, pillows and toppers | 20 | 18.3% | November (97.8) | June | 36% (20.9%) | 8% (26.6%) | 13% (15.0%) |
| Clothes steamers | 5 | 18.1% | December (93.8) | November | 46% (18.9%) | 0% | 22% (16.5%) |
| Weighted blankets, journals, magnesium | 12 | 16.4% | July (95.1) | January | 38% (18.3%) | 13% (14.5%) | 4% (10.5%) |
| Hair dryers | 4 | 15.7% | December (95.3) | October | 67% (26.1%) | 17% (14.4%) | 0% |
| Blackout curtains, sleep masks, sunrise alarms | 8 | 12.8% | November (93.0) | August | 60% (17.9%) | 0% | 0% |
| White noise machines and earplugs | 11 | 11.5% | November (97.8) | January | 24% (21.0%) | 11% (12.0%) | 10% (13.8%) |
| Pickleball balls | 9 | 10.8% | March (94.1) | October | 23% (29.0%) | 6% (15.4%) | 6% (10.0%) |
| Snoring aids | 8 | 9.2% | November (96.8) | July | 38% (21.6%) | 7% (20.0%) | 14% (19.1%) |
| Energy and fatigue (vitamins, wake-up lights, coffee) | 12 | 8.6% | November (94.2) | June | 38% (19.9%) | 9% (28.6%) | 0% |
| Book lights, blue-light glasses, Kindle | 9 | 7.9% | February (99.6) | December | 15% (20.4%) | 0% | 12% (31.6%) |
| Kitchen odor control | 11 | 4.8% | July (97.7) | January | 28% (20.0%) | 14% (13.9%) | 18% (14.1%) |
| Cat scratch protectors and scratchers | 17 | 4.6% | May (98.9) | November | 11% (21.0%) | 0% | 0% |
| Home office (chalkboards and boards) | 5 | 4.1% | August (98.6) | November | 0% | 11% (17.7%) | 0% |
"Days on sale" is for the median product in each category. The month index is the average price that month as a percentage of the product's three-year median, so 93.0 means 7% cheaper than usual. The event columns are the share of product-event checks with a cut of 10% or more, with the median cut in brackets.
Pickleball balls are the odd one out. They run cheapest from March to August (index 94.1 to 95.3) and dearest in October, which is the opposite of most categories. Weighted blankets and the other racing-mind products are cheapest in July, at 95.1.
Categories where waiting for a sale doesn't pay
Three categories were on sale less than 5% of the time for the median product: cat scratch protectors and scratchers (4.6%), kitchen odor control (4.8%) and home office boards (4.1%). Ten products across all categories were never once 10% below their usual price in three years.
Pet products are the clearest case. Across 31 Prime Day checks and 32 October checks, not one cat scratch protector or scratcher was cut 10% or more. Black Friday did it 11% of the time. November was actually the dearest month for this category. If your cat is shredding the sofa now, buy the scratch protector now.
Kitchen odor products and chalkboards behave much the same way. Seven of the 11 kitchen odor products usually sell for under $25, and a 10% cut on a $14 gel jar isn't worth planning around anyway. The exception in the kitchen odor group was a Levoit air purifier, which got its 20% cut at both the 2024 and 2025 Black Friday weekends.
The categories at the other end, where patience paid off, were air purifiers (19.4% of days on sale), cooling bedding (18.3%), clothes steamers (18.1%) and weighted blankets (16.4%). For the median product in those groups, roughly one day in five or six is a sale day, whether or not there's an event on.
How to use this before you buy
Start with the price history. Our product pages show it, and so do trackers like Keepa and CamelCamelCamel. You want two numbers: what the product usually sells for (roughly the middle of the last 90 days) and the lowest price it has reached.
Then decide what counts as a deal. Our line is 10% or more below that 90-day typical price. Ignore the crossed-out "was" price on Amazon, which is often a list price the product rarely sells at.
A target about 10% under the usual price is realistic for most of these products. The median product sat at or below it on 10.8% of days, so you won't wait forever. Holding out for the three-year low is different: that usually means mid-November. Set a price alert at your number and let the tracker do the watching.
How long to wait depends on the category. For air purifiers, bedding, steamers, hair dryers and blackout curtains, waiting for Black Friday has a decent chance of paying off. For pet products, kitchen odor products and small home-office items it mostly doesn't, so buy when you need the thing.
And don't assume a sale event means a lower price on the thing you want. As the first table shows, most of the time it didn't.
How we measured this
This study covers 141 product listings in 14 categories on amazon.com, from October 1, 2023 to October 1, 2026. Three products appear in two categories each (a sunrise alarm clock, the Hatch Restore 3 and a door draft stopper), so there are 138 distinct products. They're the products we recommend in our buying guides, not a random sample of Amazon.
For each product we took the last recorded price each day from our Keepa price history: Amazon's own offer when there was one, otherwise the lowest new offer. A product's "usual price" on any day is the median of the previous 90 days. A day counts as "on sale" when the price is at least 10% below that. Event cuts compare the lowest price during the event with the median of the 30 days before it. The month index is a product's average price in that calendar month as a percentage of its three-year median.
The limits are real. We only see the public price, so coupons, Subscribe & Save and Prime member-only prices are missing, and Prime Day probably looks smaller here than it is for members. Categories have between 4 and 20 products, so treat the category results as directional rather than definitive. The study window ends October 1, 2026, which means the July 2026 Prime Day isn't included. And because these are products we picked, the results describe them, not Amazon as a whole.
Frequently asked questions
Is Prime Day or Black Friday cheaper on Amazon?
In our data, Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Across 141 products tracked daily from October 2023 to October 2026, the price fell 10% or more over Black Friday-Cyber Monday 31.6% of the time, compared with 8.9% on Prime Day. The cuts were also slightly deeper: a median 21.0% at Black Friday-Cyber Monday against 18.3% on Prime Day. Prime member-only prices aren't captured, so Prime Day may look smaller here than members actually see.
Is Prime Big Deal Days in October worth waiting for?
Usually not, going by public prices. October's Prime Big Deal Days cut a product's price by 10% or more 9.1% of the time, with a median cut of 15.0% when it happened. In 83% of cases the price didn't drop at all versus the previous 30 days. Black Friday, about seven weeks later, did much better at 31.6%.
What month is Amazon cheapest?
November. It was the cheapest month in 6 of the 14 categories we track, more than any other month, and 44 of 138 products hit their lowest price of the three years in November, 39 of them between November 14 and November 30. Monthly averages move less than people expect, though. Across all products the November average was only 1.1% below the typical price.
Do Amazon prices go up before Prime Day or Black Friday?
Sometimes, but not as a rule in our data. We compared each event's lowest price with the median of the 30 days before. The event price was higher than that baseline in 9.7% of Prime Day cases, 9.9% of Black Friday-Cyber Monday cases and 13.2% of October deal day cases. Far more often the price simply didn't change.
How can I tell if an Amazon deal is real?
Compare the deal price with the product's usual price over the last 90 days, not the list price or the crossed-out 'was' price. A price 10% or more below that 90-day typical price is a real dip by our definition. Also check the product's lowest price over the past year or two: if the deal is nowhere near it, there's no rush.
Does this data include Prime member prices and coupons?
No. The study uses the public Amazon price only. Clipped coupons, Subscribe & Save discounts and Prime member-only deal prices aren't recorded, so the real savings for Prime members, especially on Prime Day, can be bigger than shown.
