The Cheapest Time Of Year To Buy An iPad Isn't Necessarily Black Friday Or Cyber Monday

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are far behind us now, but if you're planning to buy a new iPad, that doesn't mean you need to wait until Thanksgiving 2026 to get a good deal. Although there are iPad deals to be had in the pre-Christmas period, there are other times of year when you can bag a bargain that's just as good — or even better.

Apple itself rarely holds sales. However, it does host Black Friday and Cyber Monday events where it gives away gift cards if you buy its products. Last year, Apple was offering a $100 gift card with the purchase of an iPad Air and a $50 one with an iPad or iPad Mini. While it's better than nothing, a card that can only be used for Apple products really isn't the same as an actual discount. Buying directly from Apple isn't your only option, though. If you're in the market for a new iPad, Amazon, along with other retailers like Best Buy or Walmart, regularly reduce the price of Apple iPads, although not necessarily at the time of year you'd expect. 

We used Amazon price tracker websites camelcamelcamel and Keepa to look at price history for different models of iPads on Amazon. We discovered that while prices tend to be lower over the Black Friday season, this isn't necessarily when the absolute lowest price was recorded. Also, at the time of writing, this is a pretty good time to buy an iPad on Amazon. Prices aren't as low as they were at the end of November, but they're generally cheaper than the full list price with savings of around 8% to 18%.

The basic iPad with 128GB currently costs $299.99 on Amazon, a 17% reduction on its list price of £349. Its lowest price was $271.29 on Sunday, November 30, 2025, during Black Friday weekend. The price dropped significantly around November 20, and then had several smaller price reductions until the end of the month. After Cyber Monday, the figure rose to $329, although this was still $20 less than the price on the Apple website.

An 11-inch iPad Air currently costs $489.99 on Amazon, which is 18% less than its full price of $599. Its price was low between November 20 and December 1, at $449, but its lowest price was a one-day drop on December 20, when, for a very short time, it cost only $399.99. A top-of-the-range iPad Pro with 2TB of storage and both WiFi and cellular connection costs $2,311, 8% lower than the $2,499 list price. According to Keepa, this is the lowest price this product has ever been. The price dropped to $2,323 around Black Friday but has reduced still further since then, selling at its current price since early December.

With four styles of iPad — basic, Air, Pro, and Mini — plus numerous combinations of storage capacity, screen size, connectivity, and color, there are too many Amazon iPad listings to carry out a full history check on each one, but there seems to be a general trend of lower prices over Black Friday seasons, with other — sometimes better — reductions at other times of the year. If you want to know when prices are lowest, it might be worth setting up an alert on a price-tracking site to score the best deals.

As well as keeping an eye on the cost of the latest-generation iPad models, you might also score a bargain by buying a previous-generation model after the release of a new model. The 11th-generation iPad was released on March 12, 2025, and this 256GB 10th-gen iPad dropped to its lowest price, $349, two days after its successor's release. Mind you, the equivalent 256GB 11th-gen iPad is currently selling for $399 on Amazon, and you can get a 128GB one for $299, so this method is probably only worth trying sooner after new release dates. At the time of writing, we're nearly ten months on, and the savings simply aren't worth it. The 12th-generation iPad is rumored to be released in Spring 2026, so if you can hold on for a few more months, you might find 11th-generation models become significantly cheaper then.

The latest version of the iPad Pro has been with us for a much shorter time than the 11th-gen iPad. The 8th-generation iPad Pro with an M5 chip was launched on October 15, 2025, with a starting price of $999 on Apple's website. The previous version was the iPad Pro with an M4 chip, which was released on May 7, 2024. It's tricky to find new (rather than refurbished) older models, but you can currently buy an iPad Pro 11-Inch M4 with 256GB and both WiFi and cellular connectivity for $1,031 on Amazon. This is only around $60 cheaper than a same-spec newer model, which costs $1,099. So while you might sometimes get a bargain by buying an older model, it's worth doing your research first, so you're not missing out on newer features for the sake of saving only a few dollars.