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Five tips for finding genuine Black Friday discounts and deals

Learning how to find the best Black Friday discounts can make a meaningful difference to your festive budget, especially if you’re a keen sale shopper. The following five tips are a good starting point.

1. Don’t over-fixate on Black Friday itself

Although the day of Black Friday brings some of the best discounts of the festive sale season, good deals are likely to be available both before and after it – and some items may sell out.

“When we look at our pricing data on a daily level, you have certain events such as Amazon’s October Prime sale [not yet confirmed for 2026] that are an earlier vector for change in prices,” says Vivek Pandya, a director at Adobe for Business.

“We typically see more significant discounts starting to emerge as we get into late October or early November, and these really kick up a notch as we get into Black Friday week.”

So, while interest in Black Friday deals will peak around the day itself, some of the best deals may have been available since the beginning of the week, or earlier.

2. Expand your search to everyday essentials

At Telegraph Recommended, we’ve picked up on a proliferation of discounts on everyday household items during recent Black Friday sales (and during other occasional events such as Prime Day). If you need a top-up of items such as cleaning products or pet supplies, this could be a thrifty time to buy them.

“These sales have become a spending spree on what retailers frame as ‘everyday essentials’, as well as bigger items and gifts,” says Pandya. Last year’s Cyber Weekend saw a 260 per cent spike in sales of “personal care” items including cosmetics, shampoos, fragrances and toothbrushes, according to Adobe.

3. Use a price tracker

Free price tracking tools such as camelcamelcamel can show you how the price of a product has changed over time. This allows you to identify when a Black Friday deal has actually brought a product’s price significantly lower than usual, or when the retailer’s pricing strategy has artificially made a deal appear to be generous.

Gabrielė Vitkė, product marketing team lead at data-gathering specialist Decodo, warns shoppers to watch out for “anchoring”, where a product’s price is set high prior to Black Friday, allowing the retailer then to reduce it sharply and advertise an eye-catching reduction.

“Discounts on items such as electronics and computing products can seem steep, sometimes exceeding 50 per cent against the list price,” says Vitkė. “However, our data shows that prices in this category rose in the run-up to Black Friday 2025, which is a sign of anchor pricing before the ‘discount’ is applied.”