How to shop like a pro during Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Despite Amazon and other retailers filling the summer and fall months with more sales than ever before, Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain the biggest shopping days of the year. And, in recent years, the sale periods have started earlier, giving you more time to take advantage of the deals.

We’re already hard at work to find the best prices on phones, accessories, 4K TVs, noise-canceling headphones, gaming gear, and other tech throughout the deal-packed weeks culminating in the big events, whether you plan to shop in person or online.

You can always count on us to publish only the best deals that you need to know about, no matter the season. However, if you want to be among the first people to spot price drops on the products you’re interested in, you’ll want to get a head start on your Black Friday and Cyber Monday game plan. Thankfully, we have a few suggestions for scouting early sales at your favorite retailers, finding the right price-tracking tool, and setting up email alerts to ensure you don’t miss rare discounts at Amazon and elsewhere.

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 favorites below, many of which we use daily 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

CamelCamelCamel is arguably the most popular price-tracking tool at The Verge, and for good reason: it’s incredibly useful since it tracks the price of every product sold on Amazon and can send you alerts when an item falls to a customizable price 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 based on historical data, but it’s always a shot in the dark.

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 lets you view pricing trends on a product-by-product basis and set your desired price without leaving Amazon. It’s fantastic, easy to use, and works in several countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Australia.

As mentioned, the tracker only works for products listed on Amazon. However, in May, the company released CamelMart, its price tracker for Walmart. While it doesn’t have a browser extension (yet), its functionality is similar to CamelCamelCamel in that you can set price alerts and email notifications, so you’ll always know when your desired price threshold for a particular product is met.

Keepa

Like CamelCamelCamel, Keepa is another handy tool for tracking product prices on Amazon. Keepa has charts that track pricing trends and can alert you when it finds a deal. Similarly, 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 for Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, or Opera, and Keepa will automatically add a price history graph to supported product listings. The embedded graph shows 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

Slickdeals aggregates some of the best deals around the internet, as discovered by its team and community of users. Its site also lets you browse coupons and create deal alerts based on specific keywords, though the latter works a little differently on Slickdeals than it does with the sites above.

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 get a deal alert if it meets your criteria. You can set it to alert you to literally any deal related to your keyword, or you can filter out deals so you’ll only be notified if, for example, the deal is popular enough to make it to Slickdeals’ front page or earns a high rating from the community. If you like browsing deals, it’s generally a good idea 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.

Also, it’s just fun to see what the community digs up.

Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome

For a more hands-off way to see whether you’re getting a good deal, try your browser’s built-in tools. For a few years now, 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.

Use Alexa for Shopping, Amazon’s capable AI chatbot

You may have already noticed that sometimes, when you’re shopping on Amazon, a sidebar opens to reveal more information about the product you’re looking at. Even if you haven’t used it, you can’t miss it; it’s prominently featured in Amazon’s upper nav bar and accessible by clicking the Price History button on a given listing.

Whether you’re using the Amazon app or the website, it’s a capable tool that, at its core, does some of the same tasks as our other recommendations. It can send price alerts and show up to a year’s worth of pricing data, helping you make informed buying decisions for products on Amazon. It can also recommend alternatives that might be a better value and, if you’ll allow it, can even automatically purchase products on your behalf.

It can do a lot more, too. For instance, you can have it update you when, say, a specific product launches, and it can shop on your behalf by adding specified items to your cart at a specified frequency. You can also use it to compare products sold on Amazon, and even upload photos of wishlists to find matching products.

Set up deal alerts for Alexa or the Amazon app

If you have an Alexa-compatible smart gadget, such as an older Echo Dot Max or one of the company’s newer Echo devices, 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 will offer early opportunities to save. For example:

• Walmart is hosting three online shopping events for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Its first event runs from November 12th through the 15th, serving as a preview of sorts. The second runs from November 23rd to the 29th, encapsulating Black Friday and the days surrounding it. Finally, it switches to Cyber Monday on November 30th, with deals lasting through December 2nd. Walmart Plus customers get a 24-hour lead on deals, as in previous years, and any remaining deals will open to all customers afterward. In-store events are also scheduled for November 12th through the 15th, as well as November 27th (Black Friday), each starting at 6AM local time. Walmart’s Cyber Monday deals are online-only and start at 12:01AM ET.
• Target is going all in on early shopping this year, with a three-day shopping event happening from November 5th through the 7th, with new limited-time offers every weekend. The retailer will also host a new “Deal of the Day” each day through December 24th.
• Best Buy kicked off its early Black Friday event on Friday, October 30th. That’s done, but it’s continuing with deal events throughout the year. New doorbuster deals will drop every Friday, and its first early Black Friday event starts on November 6th. The retailer’s extended Black Friday sale will begin immediately afterward on November 19th and run through the 28th, offering a chance to save on previous doorbusters and some Black Friday exclusives. It’ll then transition into a two-day Cyber Monday sale, which will take place on November 29th and November 30th. Finally, it’ll host a “last-minute savings event” between December 18th and the 24th.

You can expect more major retailers 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-time discounts 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 a 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.

Trust the experts

We’re a discerning bunch here at The Verge, so don’t fret if you’re going into Black Friday and Cyber Monday without any prep. We’ll be corralling the best tech deals and keeping our coverage up to date with new sale items while dropping old ones to avoid disappointment. While we usually suggest paying attention to deals starting the day after Thanksgiving — or November 27th, 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 weekday Verge Deals newsletter, and start setting aside some cash for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Update 10:00AM ET, November 9th: We’ve added new ways to track prices for the upcoming 2026 holiday shopping season.