What to Expect for Amazon Prime Big Deal Days 2025

Amazon Prime Day started in 2015 and has become an annual summer sale. Prime Day usually takes place in mid-July and lasts for two days, but this year, likely in response to consumer concerns about inflation and tariffs causing price hikes, the sale was four days long. In 2022, Amazon added a second sale in October to kick off the holiday shopping season, now known as Prime Big Deal Days.

Amazon often has early deals, discounts, and other promotions in the days leading up to its big events, and and this year is no different. There are already offers on Amazon’s own lineup of devices, like Fire tablets, JBL headphones, Hisense TVs, Arlso security cameras and video doorbells, and Instant air fryers. These discounts tend to remain steady through the sale itself as well, and more will likely crop up as the sale draws nearer.

Amazon also offers exclusive promotions to Prime members, which change with every sale. For Prime Big Deal Days, they can get a $150 gift card if they sign up (and are approved for) a Prime credit card. There’s also access to early screenings for the new movie “Wicked: For Good,” which premieres in November. And Amazon is partnering with McDonald’s, through its GrubHub+ service, available free for Prime members, so customers can get a free 10-piece Chicken McNugget order once per day between now and Oct. 5.

Consumer Reports will monitor all of Amazon’s sale offerings to bring you the latest deals, so bookmark our Deals Hub and check back often.

Prime Big Deal Days typically bring price drops on popular items like headphones, robotic vacuums, smartwatches, and mattresses, as well as apparel, household goods, back-to-school supplies, electronics, toys, and more. For these big sales, Amazon touts hundreds of thousands of deals, including discounts on popular seasonal and gift items.

With all Amazon sale events, not all discounts are guaranteed to be available for the duration of the sale. This year, during July’s Prime Day sale, Amazon introduced a new feature called “Today’s Big Deals.” Each day, it served up new deals that were available only for 24 hours in limited quantities. It’s possible Amazon will do something similar during Prime Big Deal Days, but the retailer hasn’t publicly announced any promotions like that yet.

There may also be Lightning Deals throughout the sale, which have countdown clocks, encouraging shoppers to buy quickly rather than miss them. Other sales may end without warning if items go out of stock. For more on how to get the best deals, check out our tips.

Consumer Reports’ experts will be tracking all the deals and sharing the best offers on top-tested products.

Since Amazon’s first sitewide event, there have been big sales at other major stores coinciding with Prime Day. The same is now true for Prime Big Deal Days, with other major retailers holding events under varying names. Some simply offer competitive pricing, while others promote their own special events that run around the same time frame as Amazon’s sale.

So far, among major retailers, only Target and Walmart have announced October sales. But in years past, Best Buy has also held a big event. Target will be running its Circle Week sale Oct. 5-11, and you do need to be a Circle member to shop most deals, but it’s free to sign up. And we tend to see a lot of the same pricing at Target as Amazon during Prime sales, so odds are you can still save even if you’re not a Circle member.

Over at Walmart, the Walmart Deals sale is available to everyone from Oct 7 to 12. Walmart+ members do get early access to the sale, though it’s only a 5-hour head start. But if you’re not already a member, it might not be worth signing up just for that since it’s a paid membership similar to Amazon Prime.

Consumer Reports will be keeping an eye on all of these retailers and more to help you find the best prices on quality products.

If you’re not already a Prime member, you’ll need to sign up to access this sale. (Check the Amazon policy on free trial memberships.) You can add items to a shopping list or even to your cart (you can always move them to “saved for later”) so that you can quickly access them during the sale to see whether they’re available at a discount.

Consumer Reports will track all the deals available before, during, and after Prime Big Deal Days, all the way through Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the holiday season. We’ll compare prices on CR-tested products with each one’s typical cost and watch the prices at other retailers to help you avoid overspending or buying something that doesn’t work well. You can also take a look at CR’s Deals hub for the latest and best deals from Amazon and other major retailers leading up to and during the big sale event.