is an editor covering deals and gaming hardware. He joined in 2018, and after a two-year stint at Polygon, he rejoined The Verge in May 2025.
Despite Amazon and other retailers having filled the summer and fall months with more sales than ever before, Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain the biggest shopping days of the year. Thankfully, like in previous years, we’ll be working to highlight the best prices on phones, TVs, noise-canceling headphones, gaming gear, and other tech throughout the deal-packed week, whether you plan to shop in person or online.
You can always count on us to publish the best deals that you need to know about, no matter the season. However, if you want to be among the first people to discover price drops on the products you’re interested in, you’ll want to get a head start on your Black Friday game plan. Your checklist should include scouting out early sales at your favorite retailers, setting up the right price-tracking tool, and configuring your alerts to ensure you don’t miss rare discounts at Amazon and elsewhere. Lucky for you, we’ve compiled several tips and tricks below to help you get started.
Leverage a price-tracking tool or deal aggregator
The most effective way to find a truly great deal is to set up a price-tracking tool. We’ve included a few of our favorite examples below, many of which we use on a daily basis here at The Verge. Each can help you track deals at various retailers — including Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target — but they each do so differently and come with their own set of advantages / disadvantages.
All of them are free to use, and once you’ve added the products you’re interested in keeping an eye on, you can rest easy knowing that you don’t need to take any action until it comes time to make a purchase. Just make sure you keep your email notifications on so you see the alerts as they come in.
The Camelizer makes it easy to track price history and get discount alerts for many Amazon products. Image: The Verge
CamelCamelCamel tracks the price of every product sold on Amazon and can send you alerts when an item falls to a customizable threshold. Once a product reaches the desired price you’ve set or lower, you’ll get an email about it. You can use the extension’s price graph to determine what price is likely to happen, but it’s always a shot in the dark. The tracker also only works for products listed on Amazon, so you’ll need to use one of the alternate trackers featured below if you want to track price fluctuations at Walmart, Best Buy, and other retail sites.
To track prices and get alerts via email, you’ll need to create a free CamelCamelCamel account. Additionally, we suggest installing the site’s browser extension, The Camelizer, which works with Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. The handy tool enables you to view pricing trends on a product-by-product basis and allows you to set your desired price without needing to navigate away from Amazon. It’s fantastic, easy to use, and works in several countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Australia.
As soon as a product falls below the amount set on your price alert, you’ll instantly get an email. And if you already have a wishlist saved on Amazon, you can easily import it into CamelCamelCamel.
... continue reading