Despite Amazon and other retailers having filled the summer and fall months with more sales than ever before, Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain the biggest shopping days of the year. Thankfully, like in previous years, we’ll be working to highlight the best prices on phones, TVs, noise-canceling headphones, gaming gear, and other tech throughout the deal-packed week, whether you plan to shop in person or online.
You can always count on us to publish the best deals that you need to know about, no matter the season. However, if you want to be among the first people to discover price drops on the products you’re interested in, you’ll want to get a head start on your Black Friday game plan. Your checklist should include scouting out early sales at your favorite retailers, setting up the right price-tracking tool, and configuring your alerts to ensure you don’t miss rare discounts at Amazon and elsewhere. Lucky for you, we’ve compiled several tips and tricks below to help you get started.
Leverage a price-tracking tool or deal aggregator
The most effective way to find a truly great deal is to set up a price-tracking tool. We’ve included a few of our favorite examples below, many of which we use on a daily basis here at The Verge. Each can help you track deals at various retailers — including Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target — but they each do so differently and come with their own set of advantages / disadvantages.
All of them are free to use, and once you’ve added the products you’re interested in keeping an eye on, you can rest easy knowing that you don’t need to take any action until it comes time to make a purchase. Just make sure you keep your email notifications on so you see the alerts as they come in.
CamelCamelCamel tracks the price of every product sold on Amazon and can send you alerts when an item falls to a customizable threshold. Once a product reaches the desired price you’ve set or lower, you’ll get an email about it. You can use the extension’s price graph to determine what price is likely to happen, but it’s always a shot in the dark. The tracker also only works for products listed on Amazon, so you’ll need to use one of the alternate trackers featured below if you want to track price fluctuations at Walmart, Best Buy, and other retail sites.
To track prices and get alerts via email, you’ll need to create a free CamelCamelCamel account. Additionally, we suggest installing the site’s browser extension, The Camelizer, which works with Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. The handy tool enables you to view pricing trends on a product-by-product basis and allows you to set your desired price without needing to navigate away from Amazon. It’s fantastic, easy to use, and works in several countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Australia.
As soon as a product falls below the amount set on your price alert, you’ll instantly get an email. And if you already have a wishlist saved on Amazon, you can easily import it into CamelCamelCamel.
Like CamelCamelCamel, Keepa is another handy tool for tracking the prices of products on Amazon. Keepa has charts that track pricing trends and can alert you when it finds a deal. You can also import any of your Amazon wishlists.
Unlike CamelCamelCamel, however, you don’t necessarily need to create an account to track prices with Keepa; just install the appropriate browser extension, and Keepa will automatically add a price history graph to supported product listings. The embedded graph showcases pricing history and allows you to specify various pricing details. If you set a desired price, Keepa will send you a price alert via email, push notification, Telegram, or RSS.
Slickdeals aggregates some of the best deals around the internet, as discovered by its team and community of users. Its site also allows you to browse coupons and create deal alerts based on specific keywords, though the latter works a little differently on Slickdeals than it does with the above sites.
You can type in a product name, like “Nintendo Switch 2,” “OLED TVs,” or a retailer’s name, and once it’s added to your list, you’ll be notified of a deal alert if it meets your criteria. You can set it to alert you to literally any deal relating to your keyword, or you can filter out deals so that you’ll be notified if, for example, the deal is popular enough to make it to Slickdeals’ front page or if it earned a high rating from the community. If you like browsing deals, it’s generally good advice to visit Slickdeals frequently, especially since it usually has a Black Friday component that allows you to browse circulars for Best Buy, Target, and other retailers in advance.
Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome
For a more hands-off approach to seeing if you’re getting a good deal, try using your browser. For a few years now, Microsoft Edge has been able to tell you when you’re looking at the best price for a particular product from a range of retailers, and Google Chrome can track price fluctuations and notify you when a particular product goes on sale. Edge and Chrome are available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as Android and iOS.
Set up deal alerts for Alexa or the Amazon app
If you have an Alexa-compatible smart gadget, such as the new Echo Dot Max or Echo Studio, you can ask the virtual assistant to alert you when specific products go on sale. You can receive alerts up to 24 hours in advance of planned price drops for eligible products, or as soon as it notices a discount on anything saved in your shopping cart or wish list. If you say, “Alexa, buy it for me,” after being notified of the deal, the assistant will purchase the item for you once the discount becomes available.
To enable these features, open the Alexa app on your smartphone and navigate to More > Settings > Notifications > Amazon Shopping. Then, toggle the slider next to Deal Recommendations within the Shopping Recommendations section. Alexa will audibly notify you of deals moving forward, but if you happen to miss one, you can check for the notification on your phone or see whether you have any new notifications on an Echo device by checking for the yellow light. If it’s lit, just say, “Alexa, play notifications.”
You can receive similar notifications on your smartphone from the Amazon Shopping app, too. Just open the app and go to Settings > Notifications > Deals and recommendations, and toggle the slider next to the Savings option.
Check retailer schedules and plan for early shopping events
Keeping an eye on preferred retailers before Black Friday will help save you time (and money). Several major retailers have already detailed their plans in the run-up to the holidays, and many of them will be offering early opportunities to save. For example:
- Walmart is hosting online shopping events on November 14th and November 25th, with earlier start times available exclusively for Walmart Plus customers. In-store events are also scheduled for November 14th through the 16th, as well as November 28th (Black Friday). Its Cyber Monday deals are online only.
- Target is going all in on early shopping this year, with a three-day shopping event happening from November 6th through the 8th. The retailer will also host a series of week-long deal promos, which will start on November 2nd and run through December 24th. In typical Target fashion, the retailer will also price-match itself through Christmas.
- Best Buy will kick off its early Black Friday event on Friday, October 31st, with doorbusters dropping every Friday until November 20th. The retailer’s extended Black Friday sale will begin immediately afterward, running through November 29th, offering a chance to save on previous doorbusters as well as some Black Friday exclusives. It’ll then transition into a two-day Cyber Monday sale, which will take place on November 30th and December 1st.
You can expect more major retailers, including Amazon, to detail their Black Friday plans shortly, so keep an eye on their respective websites and start filling your calendar accordingly.
Pay close attention to lightning deals and doorbusters
Doorbusters, lightning deals, and other limited discount opportunities are a tried-and-true hallmark of any Black Friday sale. They’ll usually be the most buzzworthy deals you’ll see all year, with truly low prices to spark impulsive spending. As you’re checking ads, make special note of these deals and read all of the fine print surrounding their availability. Some may require you to sign up in advance or get in line early (ahem, Amazon), and some can be so scarce that you won’t have the entire weekend — or even an hour — to claim them.
Have a price-matching backup plan
Although many stores will automatically match their competitors’ pricing, sometimes, you may need to twist their arm. It’s helpful to know the various price-matching policies of each retailer in the event that your preferred store runs out of stock on certain goods. You can get up to speed with our price-matching guide, which details the lengths each retailer will or won’t go to win your dollar. Unfortunately, some retailers put a temporary halt on their usual policies during special shopping events like Black Friday, but it never hurts to ask.
We’re a discerning bunch here at The Verge, so don’t fret if you’re going into Black Friday / Cyber Monday without any prep. We’ll be corralling the best deals on tech and keeping our coverage up to date with new sale items while eliminating old ones to avoid any disappointment. While we usually suggest paying attention to deals starting the day after Thanksgiving — or November 28th, in this case — the truth is that several retailers typically jump the gun and start offering some great deals in the lead-up to the shopping holiday.
To catch every opportunity to save, be sure to bookmark our coverage, follow us on Bluesky, subscribe to our triweekly Verge Deals newsletter, and start putting a little spending cash aside for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
