How We Find Deals
We don't just look for the biggest discount. Every deal in Recomendo Deals is something we genuinely think is worth your money — whether that means a significant price drop from the historical average, or simply a product we love at a price we think is fair. Here's how that works.
The products come first
We only feature products that have already been recommended somewhere in the Recomendo universe — by the Recomendo newsletter, Cool Tools, our YouTube channel, podcast, or one of our other publications. We don't go looking for random Amazon deals. We monitor prices on about 2,900 products that we've already vetted and can stand behind.
That means every deal in this newsletter is something we'd genuinely recommend at full price. The deal is a bonus.
What counts as a deal
We check prices every morning using Keepa, a price-tracking service that monitors Amazon prices around the clock. For each product, we look at its full price history over the past 90 days and flag it when the current price looks meaningfully low. A product qualifies as a deal if any of these conditions are met:
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10% or more below the 90-day average The current price is at least 10% lower than what this item has typically sold for over the past three months.
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30% or more below the 90-day high The price has dropped significantly from its recent peak — a sign of a meaningful sale rather than a small blip.
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Near its 90-day low The current price is within 5% of the lowest price this product has been in the past three months — about as cheap as it gets.
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Simply a good value for the money Sometimes a product we love is priced well even without a dramatic markdown from its typical price. If we believe it's excellent value at the current price, we may include it — even if the algorithmically-detected "discount" is modest. This is the human override: our judgment that the price is right.
What about the "list price" you see on Amazon?
When you see a crossed-out price on an Amazon product page — like $49.99 $31.99 — that's Amazon's "list price," also called the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). It's typically set by the manufacturer or supplier, not Amazon.
List price is not without controversy. The FTC has taken action against retailers, including Amazon, for displaying inflated list prices that made discounts appear larger than they really were. In some cases, list prices reflected prices no one ever actually paid. Amazon settled with the FTC in 2016 over related pricing practices and agreed to more rigorous standards for showing reference prices.
For these reasons, we don't use Amazon's list price as our primary measure of whether something is a good deal. We prefer the 90-day historical average — what the product actually sold for recently on Amazon — because it reflects reality, not a manufacturer's marketing number. That said, list price is useful as a rough reference, and we'll occasionally mention it when it gives meaningful context.
Get the best prices delivered to your inbox
We do the price monitoring so you don't have to. When something on our vetted list of 2,900+ products drops to a great price, you'll hear about it.
Subscribe to Recomendo Deals →What doesn't make it in
Most deals we find don't make the newsletter. Even when a price qualifies algorithmically, we may pass on it if it doesn't feel like something we'd actually recommend to a friend. The newsletter only goes out when we have deals we're genuinely excited about.
Our affiliate relationship with Amazon
We are Amazon affiliates. If you click a link in this newsletter and buy something, we receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This is how we keep the newsletter free. We don't let affiliate potential influence which products we include — everything featured has to meet our deal criteria and already exist in our vetted catalog.