When is October Prime Day 2025?
October Prime Day (or Prime Big Deal Days) landed on Tuesday, Oct. 7, and runs through Wednesday, Oct. 8 this year.
Are deals really cheaper on Prime Day?
The legitimacy of Prime Day is a hotly debated topic every year. Prime Day does have some legit deals, usually on flagship Amazon products like Fire TVs, Echo devices, Kindles, and more. However, the best way to ensure you’re getting an actual deal is to prepare to shop for offers and use price tracking tools to make sure you don’t fall victim to brands marking up items to “discount’ them later.
What are Lightning Deals?
Amazon’s lightning deals are limited-time promotional offers on products. Often these products have limited quantities available at the discounted price. Once it’s 100% claimed, the offer becomes expired. Lightning deals typically last anywhere from 4-12 hours and can vary significantly. A status bar tells you how many Prime members have claimed a lightning deal. For example, here’s a live example of a lightning deal at Amazon as of Oct. 7.
Screenshot by Kayla Solino/ZDNET
Amazon Prime Day vs. Black Friday: Which has better deals?
While Amazon Prime Day has deals exclusive to Prime members, Black Friday deals are available across all retailers and are available to anyone. Some of the lowest prices we’ve ever seen products discounted at have been during Black Friday sales events. However, we consistently notice that Amazon products are priced lower during Prime Day events, so now is a better time to buy Kindles, Fire TVs, Echo devices, etc.
How can you fact-check Prime Day deals?
To find out if a deal is actually legit or worth your money, you can use deal trackers like Keepa and Camel Camel Camel that are easy to use and download. At ZDNET, we use Camel Camel Camel to track a product’s price differences over time and compare the lowest price to the highest price.
Also: We’re tracking the prices of our top 20 products this Prime Day – here’s what deals are legit
How did we choose these October Prime Day deals?
ZDNET only writes about deals we want to buy — devices and products we desire, need, or would recommend. Our experts looked for deals that were at least 20% off (or are hardly ever on sale), using established price comparison tools and trackers to determine whether the deal is actually on sale and how frequently it drops.
We also looked over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the deals we’re recommending. Our recommendations may also be based on our own testing — in addition to extensive research and comparison shopping. The goal is to deliver the most accurate advice to help you shop smarter.
What are the best Prime Day deals?
ZDNET’s experts have been searching through Prime Day and other sales to find the best discounts by category. These are the best deals live now:
And the best deals from other retailers:
More questions? Read our Prime Day guide to discover everything you need to know about Amazon’s October sale event.
