Which shopping events deliver the deepest discounts? Analysis of 200,000 retailers

Black Friday might deliver doorbuster pricing on TVs and laptops, but there's a corner of the shopping experience that doesn't get the same seasonal boost: promo codes. The coupon codes shoppers search for and punch in at checkout — the ones promising 20% off, free shipping, or $50 off your order — don't follow the rules most people assume they do.

SimplyCodes analyzed nearly 200,000 online retailers, tracking every active coupon code from July 2022 through February 2026, to find out which seasonal events actually produce deeper promo code discounts and which ones are all hype. The results were not what we expected.

The median best-available coupon code discount is 15% off whether it's Black Friday or a random Tuesday in March. The month with the highest concentration of deep promo code discounts isn't November — it's December. And several of the shopping events Americans most associate with savings, including Valentine's Day and Easter, actually offer _worse_coupon code discounts than months with no event at all.

The overall ranking: Which seasonal events deliver the deepest promo code discounts?

We ranked seven major seasonal shopping events by a single metric: the percentage of online retailers offering a promo code of 30% off or more during that event's window. We then compared each event against the year-round non-event baseline — months with no major shopping holiday attached — to see which events actually outperform normal conditions.

December clearance season is the runaway winner. Twenty-one percent of retailers offer a promo code of 30% off or more in December, making it the single best month of the year for coupon code discounts by a wide margin. That's 27% higher than the non-event baseline and nearly 5 percentage points ahead of Black Friday.

January post-holiday sales come in second at 17.2%, buoyed by clearance inventory and the highest average code volume of any period we measured (6.6 codes per stores). After that, the rankings get uncomfortably tight.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday — the events most synonymous with deals in American culture — land in third place at just 16.5%. That's only 0.4 percentage points above the non-event baseline of 16.1%. In practical terms, the promo code landscape during Black Friday is nearly indistinguishable from a month where nothing is happening at all.

From Labor Day (16.4%) down through Valentine's Day (15.7%), every remaining seasonal event either matches or falls below the baseline. The entire bottom half of the ranking is within a single percentage point — a statistical dead zone where seasonality appears to have no meaningful impact on promo code depth.

Perhaps the most striking finding is what doesn't change. The median best-available promo code discount is 15% off across every single seasonal event we measured, including Black Friday. The tail of the distribution shifts slightly — December produces more 50%-off codes (7.1% of merchants vs. 6.0% during BFCM) — but for the typical retailer, the coupon code offer is the same in November as it is in June.

The winners: When to actually shop for the best promo code deals

Three windows stood out as the clear best times of the year to find a meaningful promo code discount. Two of them are ones most shoppers overlook entirely.

December clearance: The real deal month

December isn't just the best month for promo code discounts — it's the best by a margin that isn't even close. In every single year we measured, December's share of retailers offering 30%-off-or-better promo codes beat November's by a wide margin: the gap ranged from 3 to 5 percentage points, year after year, without exception.

The pattern tells a clear story. Retailers hold their strongest promo codes back during Black Friday, when consumer demand is high enough to move inventory without deep incentives. Once the BFCM rush passes, the pressure to clear remaining holiday stock kicks in — and that's when the coupon codes get aggressive. December 2024 was the peak we observed: 22.6% of retailers offered a promo code of 30% off or more, the highest rate of any month in our entire dataset.

This table above shows the percentage of stores offering a promo code of 30% off or more

January post-holiday sales: The most underrated window of the year

January doesn't get the cultural hype of Black Friday, but it quietly outperforms it in almost every metric we tracked. At 17.2% of retailers offering 30%-or-better promo codes, January lands comfortably ahead of BFCM (16.5%) — and it comes with perks that November doesn't.

January had the highest average code volume of any period we measured at 6.6 promo codes per merchant, giving shoppers more options at checkout. It also had the highest free shipping rate (4.3%) and the highest free gift rate (1.6%) of any seasonal event. Retailers in January aren't just offering deeper discounts — they're offering more of everything, trying to sustain momentum after the holiday rush.

Even more telling: in each year of our dataset, January's deep discount rate beat the preceding November's Black Friday rate. The month the retail industry treats as a cooldown period is actually producing better coupon code deals than the biggest shopping event of the year.

Labor Day: The quiet overperformer

Labor Day doesn't make headlines as a promo code destination, and the numbers explain why — its advantage is real but modest. At 16.4% of merchants offering 30%-or-better codes, it edges the non-event baseline (16.1%) and narrowly trails BFCM.

Where Labor Day distinguishes itself is in the extras. It posts the second-highest free shipping rate of any period we measured (4.1%), and it falls at a natural transition point in the retail calendar — end of summer, back-to-school overlap — when retailers are motivated to move seasonal inventory. For shoppers who need a promo code in the late summer window, Labor Day weekend is a marginally better bet than the weeks before or after it.

The ripoffs: Seasonal events that underdeliver on promo codes

Four seasonal events consistently failed to deliver promo code discounts that beat — or even match — a normal month with no shopping event attached to it.

Black Friday / Cyber Monday

Only 16.5% of retailers offer a promo code of 30% off or more during BFCM. That's just 0.4 percentage points above the non-event baseline of 16.1% — a gap so thin it's practically rounding error. Black Friday may deliver genuine markdowns on sticker prices and doorbuster deals, but the coupon code landscape barely registers the event. Retailers appear to recognize that November demand is high enough to sell without sweetening their promo codes.

Valentine's Day

Dead last in our ranking. Just 15.7% of retailers offer a 30%-or-better promo code in February, falling below the year-round baseline despite being one of the most heavily marketed shopping events on the calendar. What makes it particularly misleading is that Valentine's Day actually has more promo codes available per store (6.5) than the baseline (6.4) — retailers are putting more codes out there, but the codes themselves aren't any deeper. More options, worse value.

Easter

Easter lands near the bottom at 16.0% of stores offering deep discounts, and it comes with the lowest average code volume of any period we measured: just 5.5 promo codes per store, compared to 6.4 during a non-event month. Shoppers during the Easter window are getting fewer codes and shallower discounts — the worst of both worlds. The March-April window appears to be a dead zone for promo code generosity.

Black Friday deep dive: More codes, shallower discounts

Black Friday deserves a closer look because the gap between its reputation and its reality is widening, not narrowing. We tracked four consecutive years of November promo code data (2022–2025) to see how BFCM is evolving — and the trend is not in shoppers' favor.

The number of promo codes available per store during Black Friday has more than doubled since 2022, rising from an average of 4.2 codes to 9.8. But the percentage of retailers offering a deep discount (30% off or more) has barely moved. It peaked at 17.5% in 2024 and then fell back to 16.4% in 2025 — actually lower than it was in 2023. More options at checkout doesn't mean better options — it means more noise.

The one genuinely positive BFCM trend is free shipping. In 2022, just 0.6% of stores offered a free shipping promo code during Black Friday. By 2025, that number had climbed to 5.8% — a nearly tenfold increase. If you're shopping Black Friday for the promo codes, the smart play isn't chasing a percentage-off deal — it's looking for free shipping, which is the one perk that's actually getting more generous.

The category breakdown: Does any industry actually deliver on Black Friday promo codes?

The most common pushback to a finding like this is category-specific: "Sure, the average might be flat, but Black Friday must be great for electronics" or "Fashion deals are always better in November." We tested this by comparing BFCM promo code discounts against non-event baseline months across every major retail category in our dataset.

No category shows a meaningful Black Friday promo code advantage.

The largest lift we found was in Sports & Outdoors, where the average promo code discount during BFCM was 0.8 percentage points higher than baseline — a gap most shoppers would never notice at checkout. Software and Entertainment showed small lifts of 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points. Everything else was functionally flat.

The most striking result is Electronics — the category most culturally synonymous with Black Friday. The average promo code discount during BFCM was 17.9%, exactly the same as during non-event months. The share of electronics retailers offering 30%-or-better codes was 15.2% during both periods. Black Friday moves the needle on electronics sticker prices and doorbuster deals, but the promo code landscape doesn't register the event at all.

Apparel, another category shoppers heavily associate with November deals, showed a 0.1 percentage point BFCM lift. Beauty was similarly flat. Home & Garden: zero difference.

Even in the best-case categories, the BFCM promo code advantage tops out at less than one percentage point on average discount. The data is clear: if you're counting on Black Friday to unlock a better coupon code in your category, the calendar isn't doing the work you think it is.

Black Friday is overrated for promo codes

The American shopping calendar is built on a set of assumptions that, at least when it comes to promo codes, the data doesn't support. After analyzing inventory across nearly 200,000 online retailers, the pattern is consistent and hard to argue with: seasonal shopping events do not produce meaningfully deeper promo code discounts than ordinary months.

For shoppers, the takeaway is straightforward: stop organizing your purchases around the retail calendar and start paying attention to December clearance and January sales, the two windows where promo codes actually get more generous. And the next time a Black Friday email promises "our biggest codes of the year," know that the data tells a different story.

Methodology

This study analyzed coupon code inventory data from the SimplyCodes platform, which tracks active promo codes across online retailers in real time. The dataset covered 45 complete months from July 2022 through February 2026, comprising over 2.7 million merchant-month observations across nearly 200,000 unique online retailers.

What we measured: For each merchant in each month, we identified the best available percentage-off promo code — the single highest discount a shopper could find at that retailer during that period. We also tracked the total number of active codes per merchant and the availability of free shipping and free gift promo codes.

How we defined seasonal events: Each seasonal shopping event was mapped to its primary calendar month or months: Black Friday/Cyber Monday (November), December clearance (December), post-holiday January sales (January), Valentine's Day (February), Easter (March–April), Back-to-School (July–August), and Labor Day (September). The non-event baseline consisted of months with no major shopping holiday: June, August, and October. Because our data is aggregated at a monthly level, seasonal events that span only a portion of a month (such as a single holiday weekend) are represented by the full month's data.

How we defined "deep discounts": We used two thresholds — 30% off or more and 50% off or more — to measure the share of merchants offering promo codes at each depth. These thresholds were chosen because they represent meaningful savings that would influence a purchase decision.

Filtering and outlier handling: The analysis was restricted to percentage-off promo codes (excluding dollar-off codes, which use a different unit and are not directly comparable). Discount values were capped at 100% to remove data artifacts. The underlying dataset applies pre-filters for code quality: only non-sticky, non-single-use, moderation-approved codes from shoppable merchants are included.

Category analysis: Merchant categories were assigned using SimplyCodes' internal category taxonomy. The BFCM category comparison used June, August, and October as baseline months to avoid contamination from adjacent seasonal events (September/Labor Day and December clearance).

Limitations: This study measures the promo code landscape specifically — the coupon codes shoppers search for and apply at checkout. It does not capture sticker price markdowns, doorbusters, lightning deals, or other promotional mechanics that don't involve a code. Black Friday and other seasonal events may deliver genuine value through these other channels; our findings apply only to the promo code experience.