This live data study measures when Halloween discounts actually get deepest, and separately when costume shoppers actually turn up — read from the promo codes SimplyCodes tracks at costume, Halloween-specialist and party-supply retailers, and re-measured every day. The two answers point in different directions.
SimplyCodes, the code verification service, measured costume-retailer promo codes across 5 years and a full Halloween season. Discount depth shows no Halloween season at all, holding between 12.7% and 17.4% deep codes in every calendar month. Code activity peaks in the week of Oct 13, 2025, then falls 74% by Halloween week itself.
- October is not the deep month: costume retailers run 16.2% deep codes in October against 17.4% in July, the deepest month across 5 years on record.
- Shopper activity peaks in the week of Oct 13, 2025 — well before the night itself — and has already fallen 74% by the week of Nov 10, 2025.
- The practical read: the codes on offer in the run-up are the codes on offer, and waiting until the last week means choosing from a thinner board rather than a deeper one.
Browse every verified costume promo code on SimplyCodes — the full catalog behind this board.
Codes copied = how many costume, party and Halloween-store promo codes shoppers copied that week · Retailers = how many of those stores had a code copied. The depth figures quoted above come from a separate four-year series of monthly discount records for the same retailers.
| # | Week | Codes copied | Retailers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Week of Aug 4, 2025 | 813 | 30 |
| 2 | Week of Aug 11, 2025 | 912 | 30 |
| 3 | Week of Aug 18, 2025 | 1,073 | 35 |
| 4 | Week of Aug 25, 2025 | 881 | 32 |
| 5 | Week of Sep 1, 2025 | 1,058 | 33 |
| 6 | Week of Sep 8, 2025 | 1,162 | 38 |
| 7 | Week of Sep 15, 2025 | 1,626 | 32 |
| 8 | Week of Sep 22, 2025 | 1,438 | 40 |
| 9 | Week of Sep 29, 2025 | 2,270 | 46 |
| 10 | Week of Oct 6, 2025 | 2,238 | 45 |
| 11 | Week of Oct 13, 2025 | 2,733 | 40 |
| 12 | Week of Oct 20, 2025 | 1,517 | 38 |
| 13 | Week of Oct 27, 2025 | 963 | 36 |
| 14 | Week of Nov 3, 2025 | 947 | 39 |
| 15 | Week of Nov 10, 2025 | 705 | 34 |
15 weeks of the Halloween season across costume, party-supply and Halloween-store retailers · an all-store measurement, no individual store named · the weekly curve rests on one season, while the depth comparison behind it spans 5 years · 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 measure two things. First, how many promo codes shoppers copied each week at costume, party-supply and Halloween-store retailers through the season, grouped into calendar weeks beginning Monday. Second, how deep those retailers' discounts run in each calendar month across 5 years of monthly discount records — which is what lets this live data study say whether October is genuinely a deeper month rather than just a busier one. Only codes whose stated value is a percentage enter the depth calculation, bounded between 1% and 95% to drop placeholder entries. Categories contributing fewer than 3 retailers are excluded, which is why the cohort is the three Halloween-specific groupings rather than every store that happens to sell a costume. The weekly curve rests on a single season. The depth series does not, and that is the claim this live data study leads with. Figures refresh with the data snapshot shown above.
Cite this data
Across 5 years of records, costume retailers' discount depth stays between 12.7% and 17.4% in every calendar month — October is no deeper than July.
According to SimplyCodes warehouse data (Halloween discount timing curve, August 13, 2026), Halloween costume discounts show no seasonal deepening, while shopper activity peaks in the week of Oct 13, 2025 and falls 74% by Halloween week.
More from this live data study
Halloween has no discount season
Pooling at least four years of monthly data across the 300 costume retailers SimplyCodes tracks, the share of promo codes running 25% off or deeper barely moves across the calendar. January reads 12.7%, July 17.4%, September 16.5% and October 16.2%.
October is not the deep month, and it is not even in the top three. The single deepest month on four years of record is July, and the gap between the best month and the worst is 4.7 points — small enough that a shopper would never feel it.
That finding contradicts almost every costume-timing guide in circulation: there is no October discount cliff. Costume retailers discount at roughly the same rate all year, and Halloween does not change that.
Halloween moves the crowd
Code activity at costume, party-supply and Halloween-specialist retailers has a sharp season, and it ends earlier than the calendar suggests.
Through August 2025 the floor sat between 813 and 1,073 codes a week. Activity roughly doubled through September, reaching 2,270 in the week of September 29. It peaked in the week of October 13 at 2,733 codes — 18 days before Halloween.
Then it collapsed: the week of October 20 fell to 1,517, and the week of October 27, the run-up to Halloween itself, fell to 963 — a 64.8% drop from the peak and below where the season started in August.
The Halloween shopping window closes roughly two weeks before Halloween. By the last week of October, the people buying costumes have already bought them.
How to time a costume purchase
Stop timing the discount. Four years of data say it will not arrive, and the difference between the best and worst month is smaller than the difference between two stores.
Time the selection instead: mid-October is when the most people are buying and the most retailers are active, which is also when the specific costume you want is most likely to be gone. Shopping the last week of September or the first week of October puts you ahead of the peak with the same discounts available.
Either way, the full costume catalog is verified continuously, whatever week you arrive.
