Prime Day Shoppers Are Spending Less, and Many Say the Deals Just Aren’t There

Amazon's Prime Day is supposed to be the moment shoppers fill their carts with the year's best discounts. This year, a growing number of them are saying the deals do not live up to that promise, and the spending numbers back up the complaint.

Early data from market research firm Numerator shows the average household had spent nearly $105 at the sales event as of 4 p.m. on day two, compared to more than $126 at the same point last year, a nearly 17% drop. At about $47, the average order size is also down sharply from the prior year. Chain Store Age's coverage of the same tracker pegged the day-two decline in average household spend at 17%, down from $126.26 in 2025, with nearly half of households shopping the event having already placed two or more separate orders. Numerator bases its estimates on data from tens of thousands of Prime Day orders alongside surveys of verified buyers.

A Pattern That Started on Day One

The softness was not a one-day blip. The average order size on June 23 was $48.36, down approximately 17% from $58.37 during the same reporting period in 2025, while average household spend came in at roughly $89.04, down 16% from $106.41 the year before. That report noted 2026 is the second straight year that order size and average household spend on the first day of Prime Day declined from the same period the prior year.

Bloomberg's reporting on the same Numerator data described the event's start as slow, with the average tracked household spending about $89 by the afternoon of opening day. Amazon pushed back on that framing. “Third-party data on deal selection and purchasing trends are often inaccurate, as is the case with these reports,” an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg over email, adding that the company has been pleased with the early customer response and that sellers are offering more than 1 million items at their lowest price this year.

What Shoppers Are Actually Buying

Numerator's tracker shows shoppers gravitating toward cheap, practical items rather than big-ticket purchases. Premier Protein Shakes, Liquid I.V. Packets, and Hefty Ultra Strong Trash Bags ranked among the top-selling items through the event's early days, the firm's live tracker shows. Items priced under $20 made up the large majority of purchases, while items over $100 represented only a small sliver, and the average spend per item came in well below where it stood at the same point in 2025.

That stock-up pattern echoes what happened during last year's event too. A SmartScout compilation of Prime Day statistics found that 2025's average spend per item dropped to $24.59 from $28.47 the year before, even as the average household placed more separate orders, summarizing the shift simply: more orders, cheaper items, a stock-up event rather than a splurge event.

Real Shoppers Echo the Frustration

The sentiment behind these numbers shows up clearly in individual accounts. Patrice Kihlken, a 65-year-old Ohio retiree, told Bloomberg she checked Amazon for discounts on summer dresses and jewelry-making supplies but was not impressed with what she found. “It's just underwhelming to me,” Kihlken said. “Most of the things that I looked at, they're 5 percent, 10 percent, maybe 15 percent off. Anything that's really nice is not on sale.”

A Reddit user voiced a similar complaint in a thread that gained traction on the platform, writing that they regularly buy items off Amazon and, looking through their backlog of things to buy, found virtually nothing noticeably cheaper than the usual sales they see throughout the year.

That complaint tracks with what pricing researchers found during last year's event. EcomCrew's coverage of Prime Day 2025 reported that average discounts ran smaller than the year before, partly a result of trade policy uncertainty and margin pressure from tariffs, which pushed sellers toward more conservative pricing.

The Discounts May Be Less Real Than They Appear

Part of the gap between Amazon's framing and shopper sentiment may come down to how reference prices get set in the first place. A separate analysis of Prime Day pricing trends cited Omnia Retail data showing that during Prime Day 2025, 45.5% of products actually increased in price in the weeks before the event, while only 0.6% saw a price drop of more than 20% and just 2.6% dropped more than 10%. For most listings, the analysis found, the Prime Day discount simply returned prices to where they had been a month earlier, after average prices had climbed in the run-up to the sale.

That dynamic, raising prices ahead of a sale so the discount looks bigger than it is, has drawn enough regulatory attention that Amazon changed its own rules this year. The same EcomCrew piece noted that Amazon's new reference price rules, effective April 23, now require list prices to be backed by real sales data, meaning sellers who inflated reference prices to manufacture the appearance of a deep discount can no longer rely on that tactic.

The Bigger Picture Looks Stronger Than the Household-Level Data

Even as individual spending looks soft, the event's aggregate numbers still point to growth. Adobe Analytics projected ahead of the sale that total U.S. e-commerce spend would reach $26.3 billion during the four-day window running June 23 to 26, a 9% increase from the prior year, and Reuters reported that spending hit $8.3 billion on day one alone, beating Adobe's own pre-event estimate of $7.9 billion.

The seeming contradiction, aggregate spending up while average household and order-level spending are down, makes sense once the math is unpacked. More shoppers participating and placing more individual orders can push total dollars higher even while each shopper spends less per order, which is exactly the pattern Numerator's data shows playing out in real time.

Why This Year's Event Looks Different

A few factors set 2026's Prime Day apart from prior years. The event moved to June instead of July, a decision Amazon appeared to base on the attention already commanding the calendar around the World Cup and America's 250th anniversary celebrations.

Consumer sentiment is also working against Amazon's favor. Sentiment remains historically low, which appears to be intensifying competition for shopper attention rather than easing it. According to Numerator, 53% of shoppers compared prices or products across retailers before making a Prime Day purchase, nearly half said they planned to shop Walmart's concurrent sales event, and roughly a third said the same about Target's.

Still, the event is not over, and Prime Day has a track record of building momentum in its final stretch rather than its first. It remains entirely possible that shoppers are simply holding out, waiting to see whether steeper discounts materialize before the four-day window closes.