Black Friday 2026 falls on November 27, with Cyber Monday following on November 30. Before trusting a discount badge in either sale, it's worth knowing what a 2025 survey found: more than a third of online items advertised zero real savings off their actual pre-Black Friday price. Our free Black Friday real discount checker is built to catch exactly that.
Are Black Friday deals really discounts? What the data says
A 2025 WalletHub survey — reported independently by NBC, CNBC, and Benzinga with matching figures — found that 36% of online items offered no real savings compared to their pre-Black Friday price. For the items that did have a genuine discount, the average was 24% off, notably below the 30-50%+ figures often splashed across sale banners.
Black Friday fake discount calculator: how the trick works
The math behind a misleading "deal" is simple: raise the "original" price in the weeks before the sale, then advertise a discount off that inflated number. The discount percentage on the tag is real arithmetic — it's just measured against a number that was never really the going price. Comparing against a price you've actually seen recently exposes this in seconds.
Cyber Monday deal checker 2026: does the pattern hold beyond Friday?
There's no reason to assume Cyber Monday is any more reliable than Black Friday itself — both run on the same advertised-discount-off-an-inflated-reference-price mechanic. The same three numbers (listed price, deal price, recent price) work for checking a Cyber Monday listing just as well as a Black Friday one.
A note on the numbers we didn't use
An older, widely-cited figure claims an average real price reduction of just 5.5% and more than a third of tracked products actually pricier on Black Friday than earlier in the season. We found that number repeated across several sites, but the original report it traces back to is no longer reachable online (the company's blog now redirects elsewhere) — so we're citing WalletHub's directly verifiable 2025 survey as the primary figure here, and flagging the older number as unconfirmed rather than presenting it as settled fact.
Try the Black Friday Real Discount Checker → · Shopping in October too? See the Prime Big Deal Days Checker.
Sources: WalletHub 2025 Black Friday survey, as reported by NBC Chicago, CNBC, and Benzinga (2025-11-26); Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2026 dates cross-checked via National Day Calendar and ShopBack. This is general shopping information, not financial advice.
