The Ultimate Guide to Amazon Prime Day 2021: When It Starts, the Best and Worst Deals, Competing Events, More

Prime members can plan their Prime Day purchases in advance to efficiently score the biggest and best deals throughout the two-day event.

Amazon Prime Day packages sit on a front porch
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Amazon Prime Day -- really days, but who’s counting? -- is set to launch at midnight June 21 and roll straight through June 22. Amazon has historically hosted its Prime Day in July -- Christmas-in-July fireworks, so to speak, to ignite a typically dull period in retailing. Company execs said June was picked this year because of the 2021 Summer Olympics occurring in July and the fact that many people vacation in that month.

Last year, due to the pandemic, Amazon Prime Day was shifted to October, providing an early launch to the year-end holiday shopping period.

Will Amazon Prime Day 2021 be worth your time and money? Don’t get me wrong. I, too, get sucked into the whizzes and whirls of the carnivalesque Prime Day, which manages to add (mostly) unneeded burden to my Amazon Prime Visa card (yes, I am card-carrying Amazon Prime member and have been for many years now). There are deals to be had -- and we’ll get there.

But in case you haven’t taken part in this mercantile madness in years past, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Amazon Prime Day is basically a yard sale of millions of goods Amazon hasn’t unloaded in the past year, with more unnecessaries than necessaries among the flotsam and jetsam.

It’s also an enormous time-suck as you’re whiling away your (uh, working) hours hoping to score a big deal. You might, but there are better chances you won’t. Especially this year.

Here’s what you need to know to find the best deals on Amazon Prime Day 2021 without staring at your computer screen for 48 straight hours:

Bob Niedt
Online Editor, Kiplinger.com

Bob is a Senior Online Editor at Kiplinger.com. He has more than 40 years of experience in online, print and visual journalism. Bob has worked as an award-winning writer and editor in the Washington, D.C., market as well as at news organizations in New York, Michigan and California. Bob joined Kiplinger in 2016, bringing a wealth of expertise covering retail, entertainment, and money-saving trends and topics. He was one of the first journalists at a daily news organization to aggressively cover retail as a specialty, and has been lauded in the retail industry for his expertise. Bob has also been an adjunct and associate professor of print, online and visual journalism at Syracuse University and Ithaca College. He has a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a bachelor’s degree in communications and theater from Hope College.