Our tips for saving on Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day is the retail giant’s biggest sales event that takes place around summer every year. Created to rival Black Friday in terms of a number of deals, Prime Day has quickly become a go-to for significant savings on the wide range of goods the world-famous company sells. 

If you want to make the most of the deals the famed event offers, we’ve put together some tips for saving on Amazon Prime Day. Read on for our best advice on bagging the best bargains.

1) Get a Prime Membership

Sorting out a Prime account is essential to cashing in on Prime Day savings. Many customers miss out on discounts because they forget that the deals are for Prime members only. Thankfully, it’s easy to avoid making this mistake with a quick visit to your Amazon account. 

If you aren’t currently a Prime member, we highly recommend making use of a well-timed free trial to save on membership fees. Just start your trial in the run-up to the event (once the dates have been confirmed) and you’re good to go. You can always cancel once Prime Day is over if you’d like to keep it that way.

Students can get 6 months free at the start of their membership, followed by a discounted price of only £4.99 a month after the free trial ends. If you’re in full-time education, this is a great way to spend as little as possible whilst getting involved in Prime Day sales.

2) Decide which categories you’re interested in

As one of Amazon’s well-known taglines says, their online range includes “everything from A to Z”. You can shop a huge number of categories including electronics, books, smart tech, films, TV, music, games, home & garden items, toys, fashion, sports gear, musical instruments, healthy & beauty products, & even food & groceries.

Amazon lets you filter results by categories using the search bar and a series of checkboxes on the left-hand side of results pages. Decide what kind of products you’re looking for ahead of time and using these categories to narrow down your search on the day will help you only see the offers that are relevant to you.

3) Create a shopping list

When Prime Day rolls around, you’ll see hundreds of thousands of offers to choose from. Seriously - according to Amazon’s own stats, more than 2 million deals went live for Prime Day 2021. If that sounds like a lot to sort through, you’d do well to start thinking about what you actually want to buy before the event starts. Add items you want to buy to your wishlist or basket or write down specific products to look up on the day. 

We advise using your basket or wishlist, as this will also let you receive notifications about deals on these specific products. What’s more, knowing what you’re after will save you from being drawn in by the multitude of other offers out there. Keeping to your budget will be easier without the same temptation to buy something you don’t need, meaning the discounts you pick up will mean genuine savings in your wallet.

4) Look out for early access

Although Prime Day began as a single 24-hour day of deals, it has now expanded to a 48-hour sale, and Amazon has also started running separate Early Access sales to give customers additional chances to bag savings. In 2022, after the summer Prime Day event, customers could return on October 11th & 12th for what Amazon dubbed ‘Prime Day Early Access’, which promised deals ahead of the holiday shopping period.

Early Access events are much like Prime Day - the exact dates change each year, but you can expect them before the start of the holiday season, and they offer similar numbers of discounts on the same products. You’ll see up to 50% off selected products, plus multibuy deals, best sellers, and offers on streaming service subscriptions.

Don’t get Early Access confused with the deals Amazon tends to start running offers ahead of the main Prime Day event (which people often do). According to Amazon, Early Access is a separate event, usually in Autumn, that gives customers a second chance to snap up goods at low prices ahead of the holiday season. When most people say ‘early offers’, they tend to think of the promotions that start to appear ahead of the main Prime Day, which leads us neatly on to our next tip…

5) Tune in early

As we mentioned, you’ll start to see deals pop up before the actual date of Prime Day to entice customers in before the main sale kicks off. Expect to see deals appearing as far as two weeks ahead of the date. Generally, deals tend to get better as it gets closer to the main sale, so you’ll need to make judgement calls on whether a good offer should be pounced on now, or if a better one might come up on the day itself. 

Deciding whether a deal is worth grabbing works on a case-by-case basis. First, has that product been on sale for less before? If so, it likely will again in the near future. It’s also worth checking how long an offer lasts. Generally, more limited-time offers are more generous, which is why they aren’t around for long… 

6) Check for lightning deals

Prime Day features a range of different promotions outside of the main sale, such as a ‘Deals of the Day’ section which is updated daily with 24-hour offers, flash sales, and so-called ‘Lightning Deals’. Both flash sales & lightning deals will bring savings for a short time, so you’ll need to keep your ear to the ground if you don’t want to miss them.

Flash sales tend to be offered on categories, whereas lightning deals are often specific to individual products. For instance, a flash sale on electronics might give you an extra 10% off selected devices for a few hours only, whilst a lightning deal on selected Macbook models might net you 20% off selected that’s only around for the next hour or two.

7) Research new products

It’s also handy to know if any new products are launching for or around Prime Day. Whenever new products launch, older products of the same kind tend to come down in price. This is especially true for tech goods - the iPhone 14 will become cheaper when the iPhone 15 is released, for example - but it’s also true in other categories such as fashion. Think of the savings offered on last season’s fashion.

When new products are launched, you may see promotions to bring the launch price of the latest models down. However, this isn’t guaranteed, and products are often at their most expensive just after they launch. Even if there are discounts available, buying the latest device can set you back a serious sum.

Your best bet for saving in the wake of newly launched products is to opt for older models, as these are often heavily discounted once they have become less recent. The older the model you choose, the better. For instance, if the iPhone 15 released tomorrow, you could expect decent savings on iPhone 14s compared to before the launch, but if you wanted to cash in on the biggest price drops, looking at the likes of the iPhone 13 or even iPhone 12 might reveal some brilliant bargains.

8) Beware no-name brands

As an extensive online marketplace, Amazon sells all kinds of products from many of the world’s biggest brands. However, you’ll also find plenty of lesser-known brands available to buy on the platform, as well as mysterious unnamed brands that tend to be significantly cheaper than branded alternatives.

Although these cheaper prices might be tempted, especially if combined with a particularly generous Prime Day deal, you should be cautious of no-name brand products. Choosing a brand means you have an assurance of quality and a level of accountability - even choosing a named brand you’ve not heard of means you can find out how those products have been received by other customers with a quick internet search.

With no-name brands, you have no assurance that you’re buying a quality product, so choosing to buy these products can be a gamble. Our advice is to check the reviews of any products from brands you don’t recognise, as well as the seller profile. An absence of reviews (or a plethora of bad ones) is a surefire sign that your money is best spent elsewhere.

9) Stay up to date with the latest info

Prime Day will see a lot of deals come and go, and with the likes of early access sales, pre-event offers, lightning deals, and flash sales, a lot can change in the blink of an eye. In some cases, offers should be snapped up whilst they’re still around, whereas in others, you’re likely to see better discounts if you wait until later in the event.

Knowing which way to play it can be tricky, so it pays to stay up to date with the latest info on Prime Day. What constitutes a good deal also depends on the type of product you’re looking for (which is where it pays to have expert advice on hand).

As one of the biggest retail events of the year, Prime Day attracts a lot of coverage from any number of publications, with experts & offer aficionados scrutinising each & every offer long before the event has even started. Tuning in to a trusted source and keeping abreast of what they report back will make it easier to stay in the know. 

You should be able to find out how much current deals can save you, how long they’ll last, and whether there are likely to be better deals coming up in the near future. Use these insights to decide when to swoop in early and bag bargains that won’t be around for long, as well as when to wait until a later date for more significant savings. 

10) Download the Amazon App

Downloading the Amazon App will let you keep a close eye on the best deals. Through the app, you’ll be able to add deals to your watch list, meaning you’ll get notifications when similar savings are available. You can also see all the deals that are currently available. The most useful feature in our opinion, though, is the deals notification setting. 

Turn on deals notification and you’ll be sent a notification whenever a new offer goes live, which is especially handy for catching those limited-time lightning deals whilst you’re on the go. Opt to receive push notifications to make these heads-up messages easiest to notice. The Amazon App is free to download on Android and Apple, and you just need to sign in with your Amazon account to get started.

11) Get some help from Alexa

Unsurprisingly, if you own one of Amazon’s own-brand smart devices, you can ask Alexa to lend you a hand keeping up to date with deals. In the same way that setting up push notifications on the Amazon app will keep you in the loop with new offers, you can ask Alexa to “remind you when Prime Day starts”.

You can also add items to your shopping cart, save them for later, or add it to a wish list. When the deals notification setting is on, you’ll get a warning a whole 24 hours before deals go live on those items so you know when to expect savings. You’ll see a yellow light on the ring of your speaker when this feature is active. Not sure you’ll remember to check back in 24 hours? Not a problem! Ask Alexa to order the item for you tomorrow so you don’t miss out on the deal.

12) Watch for first-party deals

It’ll come as no surprise that Amazon’s own sales event is one of the best times to save on its own-brand technology, including its e-readers, streaming devices and smart tech. Customers know it too - in 2019, Amazon set record sales for its own-brand gadgets, particularly with its Echo Dot smart speakers & Fire TV Stick streaming devices.

So much can you save on Amazon-branded devices on Prime Day? We tend to see anywhere up to 60% off devices for Prime Day. We saw 50% off Amazon Fire Sticks in 2021, and in the October 2022 event, 4th Generation Amazon Echo Dot smart speakers went on sale at their lowest-ever price of £19.99.

13) Look out for rival promotions

Given the immense popularity of successive Prime Days, many retailers have started running their own promotions around the same time of year in an effort to get in on the action. If you see a deal you’re keen to make the most of from Amazon, it’s worth checking if you can find that product on offer at another retailer so you can be sure you’re saving as much as possible. 

Retailers like Currys frequently run sales on tech, and their price match guarantee means they’ll meet prices even if they’re part of promotions like Prime Day. Using price match schemes can mean you net the same discount along with the benefit of added extras that only competing retailers offer, such as freebies, bundle deals, or better warranties.

Now you know how to get the most out of Prime Day! With our advice and a little preparation, you can grab all the new products your heart desires without breaking your budget and make the next Prime Day a day to remember. And for the latest deals and offers, head to our Amazon discount page.