After every Prime Day, a recurring anxiety appears in seller groups: Prime Day discounts were too deep; when applying for Black Friday Deals, will the system lower the “historical lowest price,” causing Deal submission failure or forcing loss-making prices?

 This worry is not unfounded. In 2025, Amazon made multiple rule changes around “historical sale price,” and Black Friday registration fees jumped from $100 to $245, squeezing pricing space and profit margins from both sides. Below we explain the rule mechanics, actual impact, and practical solutions.

1. First, clarify: Will Prime Day low prices “contaminate” Black Friday Deal prices?

 Many sellers assume that Prime Day discounts are remembered by the system, so Black Friday Deals must be lower than Prime Day.

 That is half right, half wrong.

 The key lies in two mechanisms: the 30-day lowest price lookback and the 90-day historical sale price median.

 The 30-day lowest price is the hard threshold for Deal submission. When you submit a Deal, the system checks the ASIN’s lowest recorded price in the past 30 days—including regular prices, previous Deal prices, promotions, and other sellers’ Prime Exclusive prices. If your Deal price is not equal or lower, the Deal may be suppressed or blocked.

 But prices from platform-level events like Prime Day are explicitly excluded from Black Friday’s 30/60-day price lookback. Amazon has confirmed: fall Prime event prices do not affect Black Friday Deal eligibility.

 What requires caution is the 90-day historical sale price median. From November 2025, Amazon requires Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions to calculate discounts based on the 90-day median customer purchase price, and coupons and daily promotions are included.

The difference between the two mechanisms:

• Prime Day promotional prices: usually not counted in the 30-day lowest price threshold; they do not affect submission eligibility.

• Daily Coupons, off-site promotions, and manual price cuts before or after Prime Day: these enter historical sale price calculations, lowering your price baseline and compressing Black Friday discount room.

So the core conclusion: Prime Day itself is not scary; what is scary are the everyday promotions you run around Prime Day to chase volume.

2. What sellers encountered: not applying feels bad, applying feels worse

 During 2025 Black Friday, many sellers faced large-scale Prime Exclusive Discount errors: they paid the fee and submitted, but the system required prices at least 5% below the 30-day lowest price to take effect, forcing some total discounts above 21%.

 Some sellers invested over $1,000 in Prime Exclusive Discounts, only to be told to lower prices further or lose eligibility after the event started.

 Meanwhile, the Black Friday registration fee structure fundamentally changed. In 2025, Prime Exclusive Discount registration for Black Friday jumped from $100 to $245—more than double—and billing switched from per-ASIN to per-event group. Some sellers calculated they needed about 200 more orders just to break even with fees and peak-season fulfillment/storage increases.

 Profit pressure is also obvious. Some sellers reported Black Friday online sales grew 6x over normal days, but average discounts reached nearly 50%, so the more they sold, the more they lost.

3. Can Black Friday Deals still be done? Strategies for three seller types

Type 1: Prime Day discounts between 20%-30%, with no large daily price fluctuations

 These sellers are least affected. Prime Day prices are not counted in the 30-day lookback, so Black Friday Deal eligibility is largely unaffected. The core task is to verify everyday promotions before and after Prime Day—if you ran multiple Coupons or off-site discounts between July and October, those prices enter the 90-day historical median. Check Seller Central reference prices in advance to assess discount room.

Type 2: Prime Day discounts above 40%, followed by repeated price cuts to clear inventory

 These sellers face the most pressure. Although Prime Day prices are excluded, every later price cut—manual, Coupon, or off-site—becomes part of the “historical lowest price,” lowering the Black Friday Deal price ceiling.

 The recommended path: control promotion rhythm before October; avoid repeated price cuts outside major event windows. If inventory pressure is high, prioritize off-site clearance channels to avoid leaving low-price records on Amazon. The October fall Prime event can be used normally; its prices do not affect Black Friday eligibility and can help build ranking.

Type 3: Small and medium sellers with limited budgets, for whom the registration fee alone requires careful thought

 The $245 fee is serious for small and medium sellers. If the product has low unit price and thin margins, registration plus discount costs can wipe out profits. Consider using Coupons instead of Prime Exclusive Discounts. Coupon fees are $5 fixed plus 2.5% of the transaction, friendlier for low-volume products than $245.

 Another practical tip: variations under one parent ASIN share one registration fee. For example, a T-shirt in 6 colors pays $245 once. If you have multiple variations, this spreads cost effectively.

4. An easily overlooked key point

 During Prime Day 2025, Amazon extended the event to 4 days for the first time, while TikTok Shop ran a 13-day promotion at the same time, surrounding Amazon’s traffic window. This means major-event traffic logic is shifting from concentrated bursts to long-cycle decentralized conversion.

 Black Friday/Cyber Monday is still growing, but growth has returned to a steady 5%-10% range, and buying behavior is becoming “everyday”—deals exist every day, and cheap products are always available.

 In this context, Black Friday Deals are no longer just a volume opportunity but a test of daily operations. If your listing’s daily conversion is poor, expecting a deep discount to turn things around makes ROI hard to justify. Treat ads as amplifiers, not lifesavers: validate conversion with content and daily promotions first, then amplify with Black Friday traffic—this is a more sustainable rhythm after 2025.

5. Summary: three core actions

First, verify historical sale prices. In Seller Central, check the reference price and 30-day lowest price for each core ASIN; confirm whether Black Friday Deal pricing still has profit. If the reference price is too low, pause promotions to let the baseline recover.

Second, control the October promotion rhythm. Avoid repeated price cuts or off-site promotions outside major event nodes to prevent further lowering the historical price baseline. The fall Prime event can be used normally; its prices do not affect Black Friday eligibility.

Third, calculate the registration fee carefully. The $245 fee is not worth it for every product. For low-unit-price, low-sales ASINs, prioritize Coupons or bundled promotions; for high-unit-price, high-conversion best-sellers, concentrate resources on Deals. For variations, use the shared registration fee rule to spread costs.

 Black Friday Deals can still be done, but the logic has changed—it is no longer “apply and get instant orders” but “calculate clearly before applying.”