This live data study tests whether the after-Christmas clearance reaches promo codes: how deep codes ran on December 26 and across the sixteen days that followed, set against the weeks before Christmas. It reads every promo code copied on SimplyCodes between October 28, 2025 and January 10, 2026, and re-measures the next post-Christmas cycle as it happens.
SimplyCodes, the code verification service, measured every promo code copied from Christmas Eve through mid-January. Discount depth over the clearance window was 26.5%, against 26.6% for the pre-Christmas weeks — a difference of 0.1 of a point. Code activity over the window ran 6% below the pre-Black-Friday baseline.
- The clearance window is not a deeper window: 26.5% of copied codes were worth 25% or more off, against 26.6% in the weeks before Christmas.
- Across every stretch measured — baseline, Black Friday weekend, pre-Christmas and clearance — depth stays inside a 1.1-point band, so no window on this board is the deep one.
- It is an honest negative result: the calendar moves how many people are shopping far more than it moves what the codes are worth.
Browse every verified gift promo code on SimplyCodes — the full catalog behind this board.
Deep codes = the share of promo codes copied in that window worth 25% or more off · Codes copied per day = the average daily volume in that window · Days = how long the window runs.
| # | Window | Deep codes | Codes copied per day | Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The 30 days before Black Friday | 27.6% | 156,278 | 30 |
| 2 | Black Friday weekend | 27.0% | 342,882 | 5 |
| 3 | December before Christmas | 26.6% | 166,858 | 24 |
| 4 | The clearance window | 26.5% | 146,746 | 16 |
4 named windows across the holiday season · an all-store measurement, no individual store named · the comparison rests on one season, because continuous daily records begin in January 2025 · checked August 13, 2026 · numbers last changed Aug 13, 2026. Refreshed daily.
Methodology
How SimplyCodes verifies codes. Behind every figure in this live data study is the SimplyCodes verification system. Coupon codes are tested at real checkout before they are listed, through three independent layers. Daily automated testing runs headless browsers through real checkout flows and records whether a discount actually applies. A human verification network of 10,000+ verifiers submits screenshot-and-timestamp proof, at 4.6M+ verification actions a month and 98% accuracy. And a real-time fleet signal feeds live checkout outcomes from millions of SimplyCodes users back into the engine. Each code carries a Health Score from 0–100, weighted by checkout outcomes, verifier consensus, and recency. With an estimated 40–60% of coupon codes on the public web dead, restricted, or fake, the system exists so a code earns its place by working at checkout, not by being collected.
How this study is built. We count every promo code copied on SimplyCodes across four named stretches of the holiday season — the 30 days before Black Friday, the Thanksgiving-through-Cyber-Monday weekend, December up to Christmas, and the clearance window that follows it — and report both the daily volume and the share of those codes worth 25% or more off. Only codes whose stated value is a percentage enter the depth calculation, bounded between 1% and 95% to drop placeholder entries. The clearance window crosses into the new year, so it is resolved as a continuous stretch rather than a calendar-year slice, and this live data study labels it by season rather than by year. One limit, stated plainly: continuous daily records begin in January 2025, so this comparison rests on a single season. Every figure is an all-store measurement, never a grade on an individual store. Figures refresh with the data snapshot shown above.
Cite this data
Promo codes copied in the after-Christmas clearance window were worth 25% or more off 26.5% of the time, against 26.6% in the weeks before Christmas — a gap of 0.1 of a point.
According to SimplyCodes warehouse data (after-Christmas clearance curve, August 13, 2026), the clearance window is not deeper than the weeks before Christmas, and code copying over it ran 6% below the pre-Black-Friday baseline.
More from this live data study
The clearance does not show up in codes
Over the sixteen days from December 26, 2025 to January 10, 2026, 26.5% of copied promo codes ran 25% off or deeper. Over the twenty-four days before Christmas, the figure was 26.6%.
That is one-tenth of a point, measured on 1,451,557 codes on one side and 2,485,356 on the other, with no step anywhere between them. December 26 itself read 25.8%, short of the deepest day of that window and short of the deepest day of its own week.
Go back further and the flatness holds. The 30 days before Black Friday read 27.6%, and Black Friday weekend read 27.0%. Every one of those windows sits inside a band barely more than a point wide, from the height of the holiday season through to the middle of January.
Why the folk answer is not simply wrong
The January clearance is real. It just does not arrive as a promo code, and neither does the 90% off people repeat about the first week of January — that is a claim about shelf prices, and the codes show no matching step.
A clearance markdown is a new, lower price on the tag. You do not paste anything at checkout to get it — the retailer has already cut it. Promo codes are a separate layer that sits on top, and that layer behaves the same in January as it did in October.
So both camps in the argument are describing something true about prices and something false about codes. If you are hunting a January markdown, watch the price. If you are hunting a code, the calendar will not help you.
Activity falls after Christmas
The demand side is just as flat, and it runs against the folklore.
Code activity bottomed on Christmas Eve at 95,333 copies, recovered to 151,321 on December 26, and settled between roughly 135,000 and 165,000 a day through the first week and a half of January. Averaged across the window, that is 146,746 codes a day — 6% below the 156,278 a day recorded over the 30 days before Black Friday.
The post-Christmas window is a quieter shopping period than mid-November. Whatever the January clearance frenzy looks like in the aisles, it does not show up as people reaching for codes.
How to shop the week after Christmas
If you are shopping the week after Christmas, shop it for the marked-down price and the gift catalog, not for a deeper code. Sixteen days of data say the code you find on January 5 is the same code you would have found on December 5.
