My background is in financial analysis, which is a fancy way of saying I'm professionally suspicious of numbers. So when Amazon tells me a product is "32% off" with a slashed-through original price, my first instinct isn't to add it to cart. It's to ask: 32% off compared to what? And when?
To answer that question properly, I ran an experiment. Starting in January 2025, I selected 200 products across ten categories — electronics, kitchen gadgets, personal care, cleaning supplies, pet products, baby items, fitness equipment, clothing basics, home office gear, and pantry staples — and tracked their prices daily for six months using a combination of CamelCamelCamel, Keepa, and manual logging.
Here's what six months of data actually revealed.
Finding One: Most "Deals" Are Normal Prices With Better Marketing
Of the 200 products I tracked, 67 — a full third — were at or near their supposed "sale price" for more than half the tracking period. The regular price displayed on the product listing was effectively the ceiling, not the norm.
Take a popular Bluetooth speaker I tracked. Amazon listed the regular price as $49.99 and frequently showed it at $34.99, marked as a deal. Over six months, the product spent 112 days at $34.99, 31 days at $39.99, and only 28 days at $49.99. The "deal" price was actually the most common price. The $49.99 was the outlier.
This pattern was most aggressive in electronics and kitchen gadgets. Roughly 40% of tracked products in those categories spent more time at their "sale price" than their "regular price."
Finding Two: Prime Day Is Real, But Selective
I specifically extended my tracking through Prime Day in July to test the conventional wisdom that Prime Day offers deep discounts. On our 200 tracked products, 43 had Prime Day deals. Of those 43, only 18 reached their lowest price of the entire six-month period during Prime Day.
The categories where Prime Day delivered genuine lows: Amazon devices (Echo, Fire tablets, Ring doorbells — unsurprisingly, Amazon discounts its own hardware aggressively), select electronics brands, and some home goods. Categories where Prime Day was unremarkable: cleaning supplies, pantry items, pet products, and personal care.
This aligns with what other analysts have found. Prime Day is best for Amazon's own ecosystem and select partner brands. For everyday consumables, the prices during Prime Day were typically within 5-10% of their monthly average.
Finding Three: The Best Time to Buy Most Things Isn't During a Sale Event
Across all 200 products, the single lowest price more frequently occurred during random midweek price drops than during any organized sale event. Seventy-one products hit their six-month low on a non-event day — a Tuesday afternoon, a random Saturday, no marketing fanfare.
This happens because of algorithmic pricing. Amazon adjusts prices constantly based on demand, competitor pricing, inventory levels, and dozens of other variables. Those algorithms sometimes create brief windows where a product drops significantly, stays low for hours or a day, and then rebounds.
Price tracking tools like CamelCamelCamel catch these drops if you've set alerts. Without them, you'd never know the $89 headphones were $61 for six hours on a Wednesday at 2 AM.
Finding Four: Subscribe & Save Is Genuinely Worth It for Staples
I tracked 30 Subscribe & Save items separately. The average savings versus one-time purchase price was 11.3% across those items. When you selected five or more Subscribe & Save items in a single delivery, the discount jumped to 15%, which Amazon promises and actually delivers.
For households buying the same consumables repeatedly — diapers, coffee, cleaning supplies, pet food — Subscribe & Save is one of the few pricing mechanisms that consistently delivers what it promises. The key is paying attention to price changes; Amazon does occasionally raise Subscribe & Save prices, and the auto-ship nature means you might not notice for months.
Finding Five: Third-Party Seller Pricing Is Volatile
Thirty-two of my tracked products were sold by third-party sellers rather than Amazon directly. These products showed dramatically higher price volatility — average fluctuations of 28% over six months compared to 14% for Amazon-sold items.
One third-party seller changed the price of a fitness resistance band set 47 times in six months, ranging from $18.99 to $34.99. There was no discernible pattern tied to sales events or seasons; it appeared to be aggressive algorithmic repricing based on competition and inventory.
What This Means for Your Wallet
Stop trusting the crossed-out "regular price." It's a reference point designed to make the current price feel like a deal, even when it isn't. The only way to know if you're getting a good price is to check historical data through tools like CamelCamelCamel or Keepa — both free.
Set price alerts for anything over $30 that isn't urgent. Define the price you're willing to pay, set the alert, and wait. Patience saves more money than timing ever will.
Use Prime Day for Amazon devices and select electronics. Don't go in expecting universal deals. Check the price history of anything "on sale" before buying; roughly half of Prime Day "deals" are matched or beaten at other points during the year.
Commit to Subscribe & Save for true staples but review your subscriptions quarterly. Prices change, needs change, and automatic spending is easy to forget about.
And for everything else: the best price appears randomly. The only way to catch it is to be watching.
This isn't a condemnation of Amazon. They're a massive marketplace with generally competitive pricing. But "competitive" and "always the best deal" are different things. The data shows that informed shoppers — those who check history, set alerts, and resist the urgency manufactured by countdown timers — consistently pay less than those who trust the list price and buy on impulse.
The tools are free. The data is available. The only cost is a few minutes of patience.
