Last year, the week before Thanksgiving, Amazon dropped AirPods Pro 3 to $219.99 and the deal sites called it an all-time low. It was. For about seven months. In June the same earbuds hit $179, and during Prime Big Deal Days in early October they sat at $179 again. Anyone who held out for the Black Friday price paid $40.99 more than someone who bought on a random Wednesday in summer.
So, are Black Friday deals worth it? Some are. The trouble is that the discount you see on the banner is measured from a number built to make the discount look large, and the one tool that protects you (a store’s price adjustment window) works best if you buy before the big day, not on it. Black Friday 2026 falls on Nov. 27 and Cyber Monday on Nov. 30, so you have about a month to set this up properly.
The “up to 30% off” is measured from a price almost nobody pays
Adobe’s 2026 holiday forecast, published in September, expects Black Friday to bring in $12.9 billion in online sales and Cyber Monday $15.1 billion. It also projects discounts topping out at 30% during Cyber Week. Read the fine print, though: those discounts are calculated “off listed price.” That’s the sticker the retailer chose, not the price the item usually sells for.
The Federal Trade Commission has guidance on exactly this. Its Guides Against Deceptive Pricing (16 CFR Part 233) say a “former price” should be one at which the item was “openly and actively offered for sale, for a reasonably substantial period of time,” and that a manufacturer’s list price implies the item is generally sold at that price. These are guides, and enforcement has been thin. California’s false-advertising law is stricter, requiring a “former price” to have been the prevailing price within the three months before the ad, which is why so many fake-discount class actions get filed there. Akerman lawyers writing in Retail TouchPoints in 2025 said those suits had more than doubled in roughly a year, with Macy’s and Banana Republic among the early targets.
The clearest data comes from the U.K., where the consumer group Which? tracked 175 appliances and gadgets across eight retailers for a full year around the 2024 sales. In its November 2025 report, 83% were the same price or cheaper at least once outside the four-week Black Friday period. Not one product hit its lowest price of the year only on Black Friday itself. One Oral-B toothbrush was advertised as “save £25, RRP £50,” and that £50 price had applied for just 13 days in the previous six months.
Are Black Friday deals worth it? Only if they beat the item’s own 12-month low
Here’s the math I’d run on anything over about $50. Take the AirPods again. Apple’s list price is $249. Last year’s Black Friday week price of $219.99 is $29.01 off, which works out to 11.7%. The $179 price from June and October is $70 off, or 28.1%. The “record” Black Friday deal was less than half as generous as two ordinary sales that followed it.
But surely waiting for the Cyber Week peak changes the picture? Adobe projects discounts of up to 14% in early November, 21% just before Thanksgiving and 30% at the Cyber Week peak. On a $249 list price that’s $214.14, then $196.71, then $174.30. That looks like a strong argument for waiting, until you notice $174.30 is just $4.70 below a price the earbuds already hit twice this year. Measured against the real low, the best case for waiting is about 2.6%.
U.S. tracking data says the same thing in another way. Visualping monitored 2,620 products at nine retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy and Staples, every day from Oct. 1 through Dec. 1, 2025. About a third of the “deals” it checked were fake, meaning the Black Friday price was higher than a price the store had already charged earlier that season, and those fakes ran an average of 37% above the earlier low. An Acer 22-inch monitor on Amazon is a good small example: $101.38 on Black Friday after sitting at $79.99 in mid-November. Wait for the big day and you pay $21.39 more, about 27% over the price you could have had just days earlier.
So skip the banner percentage. Look up the item’s lowest price over the last 12 months on a price tracker such as Keepa or CamelCamelCamel for Amazon, and treat that number as the real sticker. Anything at or below it is a deal. Anything above it is marketing.
Your Black Friday clock should start on Nov. 14, not Nov. 27
Target stopped matching competitors’ prices on July 28, 2025, but it still gives back the difference if its own price drops within 14 days of your purchase. ConsumerAffairs laid out the rule this month. The lower price has to be live when you ask (Target won’t accept screenshots), and clearance items, refurbished goods and some gift card promotions don’t count.
Count the days and the strategy pretty much writes itself. Something you buy today, Oct. 25, is covered only until Nov. 8, well before any Black Friday pricing. Buy on Nov. 14 or later and Black Friday lands inside your window. Buy on Nov. 16 or later and Cyber Monday does too. You get the item at early-November prices, before the popular sizes and colors sell out, and if Target goes lower on Black Friday you walk up to Guest Services with your receipt and collect the difference.
Best Buy has a version of this as well. Its holiday FAQ promises that “if our price goes lower during the holiday season, we’ll match it,” with some exclusions. Last year, anything bought there between Oct. 31 and Dec. 31 could be returned until Jan. 15. Not every retailer will refund a price drop, and the ones that do write their own exclusions, so read the policy page before you buy anything big. A store that refunds the difference turns an early purchase into a free option on the Black Friday price.
Some things really are cheapest that weekend, and they’re easy to name
I’m not saying Black Friday is a scam across the board. Adobe’s category data shows where the real bottoms tend to land: toys (up to 29% off), TVs and apparel (23%), and appliances and furniture (18%) on Black Friday, with electronics (30%) and computers (23%) on Cyber Monday. In Visualping’s data, video game consoles had only a 14% fake-deal rate and backpacks just 4%, while luggage was the worst at 61%. If a TV or a console is on your list, it’s reasonable to wait for the weekend. If luggage is, the price you see in early November is probably as good as it gets.
The weekend matters less than your prep. Write down the 12-month low for every item over $50 on your list first, then decide whether waiting makes sense. If you’re buying gifts for people who would rather pick their own, our breakdown of Visa gift card fees vs. store gift cards shows which cards eat the most of your money. And if any of this ends up on a pay-in-four plan, run the January BNPL payment math before you check out.
Are Black Friday deals worth it in 2026? For a short list of categories, yes. For everything else, the best price this season is the one you set yourself, backed by a receipt dated Nov. 14 or later.