Black Friday Price Tracking — Set Your Alerts Before the Sale
A Black Friday price tracking plan: what to track in October, which alert rule ignores fake discounts, and how to be ready when the real drop lands.
The Black Friday deal you actually want is decided weeks before the banners go up. By the time a page shows "30% off", the only question that matters — is this lower than what the product normally costs? — can no longer be answered from the page itself. Black Friday price tracking fixes that by starting early: you record what the product really costs in October, set an alert that only fires on a genuinely lower price, and let the sale prove itself against your own record. This guide walks through the timeline for Black Friday 2026 (Friday, 27 November), the one alert rule that fake discounts can't trigger, and the limits worth knowing before sale week.
What You'll Learn
- Why the price on Black Friday itself is the wrong thing to watch
- A week-by-week plan from now until Cyber Monday (30 November 2026)
- Which alert rule a staged "discount" sets off — and which one it can't
- How to cover the same product at several stores without losing track
- What to set up before sale week so an alert reaches you in time
The short version: add the products you're considering to a price tracker at least six weeks before Black Friday, note the lowest price each one reaches, and set a "drops below" alert just under that floor. A percentage-based alert can be triggered by a price that was raised and then cut back; a target-price alert can't.
The Sale-Day Price Isn't the Deal
A discount badge compares today's price with a number the retailer chose. Whether that number means anything is exactly what you can't see on the page — and a full year of data says it often doesn't. When Which? tracked 175 products across eight UK retailers(opens in a new tab) for twelve months, it found "no deals in our analysis that were at their cheapest price of the year on Black Friday 2024."
That doesn't make Black Friday useless. It means the sale day is one point on a price line, and you only know whether it's a good point if you've seen the rest of the line. We covered how fake discounts are constructed — inflated reference prices, stale "was" prices, permanent sales — in Is That Sale Real?. This guide is the practical follow-up: how to have that price line ready before the sale starts.
Your Black Friday Timeline
The whole method runs on one fact: a price tracker records history from the day you add a product, not before. There is no retroactive lookup for most stores, so the calendar below is really a list of deadlines for starting the clock.
Six to eight weeks out (early October): build the list
Add every product you'd plausibly buy during the sales — not just the ones you're sure about. A track costs nothing and commits you to nothing; a product you didn't track is a product you'll have to judge from the banner alone.
Early October matters because it sits well before the sale period itself. The price you record now is your baseline: what the product costs when nobody is advertising anything.
Three to four weeks out (early November): read the floor
By now each track has a few weeks of changes behind it. For each product, write down one number: the lowest price it has reached since you started. That floor — not the manufacturer's list price, not the retailer's "was" price — is what a Black Friday deal has to beat.
Watch for one pattern here: a price that sat still for weeks suddenly rises shortly before the sale. A rise isn't proof of anything on its own, but it is worth noting, because it changes what a Black Friday "discount" on that product actually means.
One to two weeks out: set the alerts
Now turn each floor into an alert rule (the next section covers which rule and why). Route the alerts somewhere you'll actually see them during a busy week — Telegram or Discord on your phone is harder to miss than a browser popup behind forty tabs.
Sale week (23–30 November 2026): stop searching, let the alerts work
With alerts set against your own floors, you don't need to refresh deal pages. When an alert fires, the price has gone below a number you chose from real data, and you can decide in seconds. When nothing fires, the sale hasn't beaten what the product normally costs — which is useful information too.
Keep watching through Cyber Monday, three days later on 30 November. A tracker doesn't care which banner is up — it only records whether the price moved.
The Alert Rule a Fake Discount Can't Trigger
AlarmBot lets you choose when each track notifies you. Two rules sound almost identical and behave very differently in November.
"Drops by X%" compares each new price with the previous one. Every change is judged on its own, against whatever the price was a moment before.
"Drops below [target]" compares the new price with a fixed number you set. In AlarmBot it fires when the price crosses below your target, stays quiet while the price moves around underneath it, and fires again only if the price climbs back above and crosses down a second time.
Here is why the difference matters. Imagine an air fryer that sells for $89.99 through September and October, rises to $119.99 in early November, and comes back to $89.99 on Black Friday with a "25% off" badge:
Example 6-Quart Air Fryer
https://example.com/p/6-quart-air-fryer
Price ranged from $89.99 to $119.99 across 7 recorded changes. The advertised reference price was $119.99. An alert was sent on 2026-11-27, when the price moved to $89.99.
The drop from $119.99 to $89.99 is 25%, so a "drops by 20%" rule fires — on a price that is exactly what the product cost for two months. The "drops below $85" rule, set just under the floor you recorded, says nothing, which is the right answer: there was no deal.
This isn't hypothetical as a pattern. The US Federal Trade Commission's pricing guides describe exactly this: an "artificial, inflated price was established for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction" (16 CFR 233.1(opens in a new tab)).
So for Black Friday:
- Use "drops below" for anything you've been tracking. Set the target at or just under the lowest price you recorded. If it fires, the price is lower than anything you've seen — that's a real deal by definition.
- Keep "drops by" for products you added late. Without a floor to compare against, a percentage alert is the best signal you have. Just check the product's history before trusting it.
- Set the target where you'd actually buy. An alert at a price you wouldn't pay is noise. If the honest answer is "I'd buy it at $75", set $75.
Track the Same Product at More Than One Store
A staged discount is usually one retailer's decision. The fastest way to see through it is to watch the same model number at two or three stores at once — including the manufacturer's own shop — and see whether "the sale" is really just the going rate everywhere.
In AlarmBot, each product page is its own track, so the same air fryer at three stores is three tracks. Two practical notes:
- Budget your tracks. The free plan covers 20 tracks. Five products at three stores each is fifteen, which leaves room for late additions.
- Group them. Put each product's store pages in one list (the free plan allows ten) so a glance tells you which store is lowest right now.
This works outside the US too. AlarmBot reads the product page directly rather than relying on a store's cooperation, so a regional retailer is tracked the same way as a global marketplace — see how tracking prices on any website works.
Before Sale Week: What to Know About Checks
Being straight about the limits matters most in the one week you'll rely on them.
- Checks run in your browser. AlarmBot checks your tracked pages from the browser extension, not from a remote server. While your browser is closed — or your computer is off or asleep — nothing is checked. During sale week, leave the browser running on a machine that stays awake.
- The free plan checks each product at most every 20 minutes. That comfortably catches price drops that last hours or days. A lightning deal that appears and sells out within minutes can fall between two checks.
- History starts when you add the track. Nothing is filled in retroactively, which is the reason the timeline above starts in October.
- Alerts go where you point them. Browser, email, Telegram or Discord — the free plan keeps two channels active at a time, with browser notifications counting as one.
Common Questions
When should I start tracking prices for Black Friday?
Six to eight weeks before the sale — for Black Friday 2026 (27 November), that means early October. That records a baseline well before the sale period, so you have a real floor to compare against.
Which alert should I use for Black Friday deals?
A target-price alert ("drops below") set at or just under the lowest price you've recorded. A percentage-drop alert compares each change with the previous price, so a product that was raised before the sale and cut back to its usual price will still trigger it.
Does a Black Friday price tracker work if my computer is off?
Not AlarmBot. It checks pages from your browser, so checks only happen while the browser is running. Leave it open on a machine that stays awake during sale week.
Can I track Black Friday prices outside the US?
Yes. AlarmBot works on any store's product page, in any country and currency, because it reads the page itself rather than depending on store partnerships.
Is Black Friday ever the cheapest day of the year?
Sometimes, for a specific product at a specific store — but not reliably. Which?'s year-long analysis of 175 products found none at their cheapest price of the year on Black Friday 2024. Your own tracked history is the only way to know for the product you want.
The Deal Is Decided Before the Sale
Black Friday rewards the people who stopped trusting the badge weeks earlier. Track in October, read the floor in November, set a target you'd actually buy at, and let the alert — not the banner — tell you when a price is worth paying. If nothing fires, you haven't missed a deal. You've avoided a fake one.
Brand, retailer and product names in this article are the trademarks of their respective owners and are used for identification and commentary only. AlarmBot is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any company named. The chart above uses illustrative data and does not represent a real product.