Black Friday vs Prime Day: Which one offers better deals?

As the Deals Editor at Android Authority, I’ve spent several years scouting out more deals than most people see in a lifetime. However, it doesn’t take any expertise to work out that Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day stand apart from the other promotions as the two biggest shopping events of the year. Black Friday has long marked the official start of the holiday shopping season, but Prime Day has become a blockbuster event centered around tech deals.

While both events promise impressive discounts, they serve different purposes and audiences, and the timing of each can shape what’s on offer. Is one of them better than the other for finding the best deals? We’ll answer that question and the others you might have in this Black Friday vs Prime Day rundown.

Black Friday vs Prime Day: Timing and duration

As with so much of capitalism, Black Friday originated in the US as the big kick-off to holiday shopping right after Thanksgiving. it’s more than just a single day of in-store deals these days — it’s practically a whole season. Many retailers now stretch Black Friday across a week or even the whole month, and most of the big deals are just as available online as they are in stores. Since it lands right at the start of the holiday season, Black Friday is perfect for grabbing gifts, with deals on everything from big-name electronics to toys and home goods that people are looking to wrap up as presents.

Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday three days later, which was supposedly more focused on digital deals. But again, the whole premise was that it was a way for retailers to extend their sales artificially, and they have long since given up the pretense of Black Friday being a one-day blowout. As such, Cyber Monday has lost what semblance of meaning it ever had, and Black November might be a more apt moniker for this whole sales period.

Prime Day is a newer tradition created by Amazon in 2015 to celebrate Prime’s anniversary every July. While Black Friday is open to everyone, Prime Day is for Amazon Prime members only, making it slightly more exclusive. That said, anyone who hasn’t been a Prime member before can take advantage of the free 30-day trial from Amazon in order to unlock the deals.

The focus leans heavily on Amazon’s products, like Echo speakers and Kindles, plus plenty of lightning deals from Amazon’s marketplace partners. And while it’s usually a two-day affair, Amazon has been known to throw in extra sales here and there. Prime Day’s mid-year timing means it’s a great chance for people to catch big deals without waiting until November, especially if they’re looking for tech and home gadgets.

Types of deals

When it comes to what’s on offer, both events cover a lot of ground, but each has a bit of its own flavor. On Prime Day, Amazon tends to showcase its own devices with some of the best discounts you’ll find all year on products like Fire tablets and Echo speakers. It also features handpicked deals from its partners, so you’ll see a lot of tech and home essentials. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s too focused — there are hundreds of thousands of deals each year.

If it’s possible, Black Friday is arguably more broad, with deals across just about every product category you can imagine. Because it’s not tied to a single retailer, you get options to shop around across brands and stores, which can make it easier to compare prices and find exactly what you’re after.

Deal comparison and value

Based on my years of tracking deals across both sales, I can tell you that there isn’t a clear winner in terms of having better offers. It’s fair to say you’re a bit more likely to find the deal that you’re looking for on a specific product during Black Friday, given the scale of participation from retailers online or in-store. However, if you have your eye on some tech and you see a good discount on it on Prime Day, you can’t assume it will be matched or bettered in the Black Friday sales.

It isn’t easy to make a like-for-like deal comparison because the discounts that arise on prominent products are usually more dependent on where they are in their release cycle than the sale they’re in. For instance, a flagship smartphone may get a significant price drop on Prime Day, followed by an even deeper discount on Black Friday, but the latter deal would be more related to the phone being on the market for another four months by the end of November, rather than Black Friday being the bigger event.

Nothing more is revealed by looking at any one popular product in particular. For example, the Google Pixel Buds Pro has been a great buy on both Black Friday 2023 and Prime Day 2024. In both cases, it was discounted from $199.99 to $119.99.

What I can tell you is that, contrary to some sources, both sales are well worth checking out. If you scan social media ahead of the sales, you’ll see memes like the one above declaring that the sales are a scam, with retailers jacking up prices and then pretending they’re discounted during the promotion. I can’t tell you that that doesn’t happen, but I can tell you that many products are never cheaper than during Black Friday and Prime Day.

Even better, there are ways you can find out if the deal you’re checking out is a genuine bargain or not. Chrome extensions like CamelCamelCamel and Honey show you the complete price history of the product, revealing whether it’s at a record-low price or subject to the same discount it gets every week.

Black Friday vs Prime Day: Which is better?

The best answer I can give is that the better sale of the two is the first one that arises after the product you want to buy is released. If you’re keen to pick up one of the Google Pixel 9 phones, the upcoming Black Friday sale is very likely to be your best opportunity so far. If you prefer to wait for the Samsung Galaxy S25, Prime Day 2025 will probably be your best chance to save on it in the first six months of its release.

If you’re more into just setting yourself a budget and browsing the shops or the internet until something catches your eye, Black Friday is objectively the better sale. It involves all the big retailers, both in-store and online, and a slightly wider range of products is on sale. It also falls at a more convenient time of year if you need to pick up gifts for loved ones and want to keep an eye on your spending.

At the end of the day, you don’t need an answer to the Black Friday vs Prime Day question. Both events offer solid value if you know what to expect and plan accordingly. A little research, a budget, an idea of what you want, and the price tracking tools will serve you well in either sale. The best attitude is to hope to find the item you want at a great price but be prepared to pass on it if the deal isn’t quite right.

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