Are Amazon's Cyber Monday prices better than Black Friday? Our shopping experts say the answer is clear.
In 2025, Black Friday is a marathon, not a sprint. The only thing is, these days it can be hard to tell where exactly the finish line is. And now that we've made it to Cyber Monday, we can confirm that tons of them are still sticking around.
Not too long ago, if you wanted to score Black Friday deals, you either had to head to the local Target at the crack of dawn or line up just after dinner leftovers had been packed away. Online shoppers bided their time until the Monday after the holiday, a day eventually dubbed Cyber Monday. It was chaos, but it was chaos with clearly defined parameters of time.
These days, Black Friday sales start as early as Halloween, lasting for weeks before the actual day happens, which raises a very real question: Is Cyber Monday still a thing? And for an online-only retailer like Amazon, where most folks do their online shopping, is it better to shop on Black Friday, or wait until Cyber Monday to score the best deals possible?
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Here's what our shopping spidey-sense, based on many collective years of covering these sales, leads us to believe.
Will Amazon have better deals on Black Friday or Cyber Monday?
In our experience, Black Friday deals at Amazon tend to be better and more plentiful than Cyber Monday savings, or they tend to be on par. In the years we've worked this sale, very rarely have we seen additional price cuts or brand new deals cropping up for Cyber Monday. While Amazon does try to hold back a couple of deals for Cyber Monday, they're often quite lackluster, and rarely include the most popular products from brands like Apple, Samsung, Sony, Ninja, and Nintendo.
Now that the holiday shopping season begins so early, Black Friday has started to feel like the grand finale, with Cyber Monday being a sort of encore. This year, we've seen tons of products hit record-low prices in the days leading up to Black Friday, like $69 Apple AirPods 4 and the DJI Mini 4K drone for $60 off. Now that Black Friday has officially come and gone, we're still seeing a ton of deals hang on. It's possible these will either hold steady until Cyber Monday or go back up in price. (If it doesn't sell out in that time, which often happens.)
Mashable Shopping Reporter Samantha Mangino put it perfectly when she wrote, "Think of Cyber Monday as your last chance to shop deals, not your best chance."
Now that we've made it to Cyber Monday and spent all weekend tracking deals, we have a better sense of the quality of deals. The consensus? Black Friday did have the better deals.
There are two main things we're noticing this Cyber Monday. First, the hottest sales have sold out. Those $69 AirPods 4? They're sold out at Amazon, and Target was the last retailer with that price, but even it has raised the price to $79.99. That being said, the second thing we're noticing is some surprise low prices. For example, Best Buy dropped some stellar doorbusters on Apple products, and we saw a record low on the iPad mini. That being said, the number of deals isn't nearly as impressive as Back Friday.
When to buy a deal on Black Friday
With the above in mind, we recommend grabbing a good deal as soon as possible. Popular items, like great Apple deals or Kindles, are especially likely to sell out or go back up in price. Mangino, who covers the e-reader beat year-round, said, "I suspect hot ticket items like Kindles won't get a Cyber Monday discount and go up to their standard prices." (Note: luckily, we were wrong about that, and Kindles are still on sale during Cyber Monday.)
If this is a little stressful to hear, we get it. As reporters monitoring these sales day in and day out, we know that there's a lot of shopping fatigue and messaging about the urgency to buy deals as fast as possible this time of year (more than anyone should reasonably be subjected to, TBH!). While we're not necessarily recommending rushing to buy every amazing deal you spot, Black Friday does remain the best time of year to find really, really good deals. And that's taking into account those can't-miss "sale prices" that can be found year-round.
If you're feeling unsure about a deal you've added to your cart, we recommend 1) checking out Mashable's Black Friday coverage, and 2) consulting a price tracker like camelcamelcamel, which can give you a full view of an item's price history, as well as any record-low prices it's hit before.
Looking for the latest Amazon deals? See the biggest discounts at Amazon’s epic Cyber Monday sale and save up to 70% on popular gifts, gadgets, and more goodies.
Topics Black Friday Cyber Monday
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon's Black Friday sale runs through Friday, Nov. 28. On Saturday, Nov. 29, their Cyber Monday sale will kick off, and run through Monday, Dec. 1. We expect that some Black Friday deals will not last through Cyber Weekend, so if you see something you like on Friday, you'll want to grab it sooner rather than later.
Bethany Allard is a Los Angeles-based shopping reporter at Mashable covering beauty tech, dating, sex and relationships, and headphones. That basically means she puts her hair through a lot, scrolls through a lot of dating apps, and rotates through a lot of different headphones. In addition to testing out and rounding up the best products, she also covers deals for Mashable, paying an especially obsessive amount of attention to Apple deals and prices. That knowledge comes in handy when she's covering shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, which she's now done for three years at Mashable.
Boston-based Shopping Reporter, Samantha Mangino, covers all things tech at Mashable, rounding up the best products and deals. She’s covered commerce for three years, spending extensive time testing and reviewing all things home, including couches, steam irons, and washing machines. She thoroughly vets products and internet trends, finding out if those cozy gamer chairs are really as comfortable as TikTok claims.
