Black Friday price tracker: how to tell if a deal is real

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2026 dates

Black Friday follows US Thanksgiving, which falls on the fourth Thursday of November. In 2026 that puts the main days here:

In practice, many shops start "early Black Friday" offers well before the Friday and keep some running into December. Treat the dates as the peak of a longer season, not a single day.

A three-week plan for Black Friday deals

A price tracker only records prices from the day you add a product. It can't look back. That makes the weeks before the sale the most useful part of the whole exercise.

1. By 6–13 November: add your shortlist. Share each product to Droplert from the shop's app or Chrome and tap the price. A daily check is enough at this stage. You're collecting a baseline, not chasing a drop.
2. Mid-November: read the history. After a week or two, each product has a lowest and highest price marked on its chart. That range is the item's real pre-sale price, whatever the shop later calls it.
3. The week before: set targets. Use what the history shows to pick a price you'd be happy to pay. More on that below.
4. Black Friday to Cyber Monday: check faster. Shorten the schedule on the items you care about most, and act on the alerts.
5. Early December: keep watching what you skipped. If nothing hit your target, leave tracking on. Prices don't stop moving when the banners come down.

On the free plan you can track up to 5 products, so put the purchases you're sure about first. Things you're only curious about can wait.

Setting targets that mean something

A target price is a decision made in advance, when you're calm, instead of at midnight with a countdown timer on screen. A few ways to set one:

• Start from the baseline low. If an item sat between 240 and 260 for two weeks, a sale at 249 is not a sale. A target somewhere under 240 is a real improvement.
• Use your own budget. If you'd only buy it at a certain price, that's your target, whatever the market does.
• Mute the noise. Set a minimum change so small wobbles don't send alerts, and you only hear about moves big enough to matter.

Alerts can fire on drops, rises or the target, so you can also hear about a price going up. That's useful when a "deal" ends earlier than advertised.

During the sale: faster checks and quick decisions

Some Black Friday prices last the whole weekend. Others change within hours or sell out. For the items that matter most, a shorter schedule means you hear about a change sooner.

• Free plan: switch your top items to hourly checks for the sale days.
• Upgraded plan: checks can run as often as every 15 minutes.

When an alert arrives, you can open the store straight from the notification, or pause tracking once you've bought. After the weekend, slow the schedule back down so the list stays quiet.

Some sites block automated checks, and a sale weekend is no exception. If a check fails, Droplert flags it and retries on the next run. For a must-have item, it's worth also checking the page yourself on the day.

Spotting inflated "was" prices

The struck-through price next to a deal is the shop's claim about what the item used to cost. Sometimes it's honest. Sometimes it's a price the item rarely or never sold at, chosen to make the discount look bigger.

Your own tracking history is the simplest check. Compare the sale price with the lowest price you recorded in the weeks before:

• Sale price below your recorded low: a real drop, whatever the badge says.
• Sale price equal to your recorded low: it's the normal price with a new label.
• The price rose shortly before the sale, then "dropped": the discount is measured from a bump, not from the real price.

For a longer look at reference prices and how to read them, see how to tell if a sale is real.

Compare the same item across stores

The biggest Black Friday saving is sometimes not a deeper discount but a different shop. The same TV, console or blender is often sold by a marketplace, a big-box store and the brand itself.

Add the same product from two or three of them. Droplert puts them in one watchlist, each in its own currency, so you can see which one moves first and which one is usually cheapest. Guides for specific shops: Amazon, Target, eBay, IKEA and brand stores built on Shopify.

Before buying, check that you're comparing the same thing: the exact model number, the same storage or size, and whether delivery is included.

The same plan works for other big sales

Black Friday isn't the only event with heavy discounting and inflated reference prices. The same approach of tracking early, setting a target and checking faster on the day works for:

• Prime Day on Amazon.
• Big Billion Days on Flipkart.
• 11.11 (Singles' Day) on AliExpress and Daraz.
• Boxing Day sales in the UK and other countries.

Shops usually announce these dates only a few weeks ahead, so add the products you want as soon as you know you'll want them.

Questions

Is Black Friday actually cheaper?

Sometimes. Some items reach their lowest price of the year, and others are discounted from a raised "was" price. The only way to know for a specific product is to track it before the sale and compare.

Can Droplert show last year's Black Friday price?

No. History starts when you add a product. That's why the plan above starts weeks early.

Does Droplert apply coupons or codes?

No. It tracks the price shown on the product page. Codes and basket discounts can make the final price a little lower.

Is it free?

Yes, for up to 5 products with hourly checks and 30 days of history. An optional upgrade allows unlimited products, 15-minute checks and a year of history. Droplert runs on Android 10 and newer, with no account needed.