Benchmarks / Black Friday statistics
3 years of order data from 2,200+ established Shopify and ecommerce brands
Fairing Data Team · Published October 2026 · Updated November 2026 · How we measured →
The BFCM season starts on November 1, when daily orders step up about 8% over October, and runs until about December 21. At the median brand, it peaks on Black Friday at about 4.6x an average October day.
Your own orders from November 16 to 22 are the best early read on this year’s Black Friday. Brands whose daily orders rose most that week against their average October day (the top 25%) saw about 9x their October daily orders on Black Friday, compared with about 2.3x for the brands whose orders rose least (the bottom 25%).
Your own history helps too: brands mostly keep their Black Friday rank from year to year.
To see your own multiple and how you’re pacing each week, use the BFCM pacing calculator.
This report covers how many orders BFCM brings and when. For where those customers say they came from, and what your ads and codes miss, see our BFCM attribution benchmarks.
How to read the data
Multiples (or lift). 4.6x means 4.6 times the brand’s average October daily orders.
Pace. A week’s average daily orders divided by your average October day; 1.4x means 40% above October.
Median brand. Figures are for the median (typical) brand and count orders, not revenue.
Revenue. Average order value stays within about 3% of normal through Q4, so revenue tracks orders at most brands.
Window. BFCM means Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
On this page
Section 2: Order volume follows nearly the same calendar every year
Section 3: November 16 to 22 orders are the best early read on your Black Friday
Section 4: Most November and December orders land outside the five BFCM days
Section 6: At BFCM, discount codes can tell you less about who sent the buyer
The median brand’s Black Friday orders run 4.6x its average October day, but the middle half of brands land between 2.5x and 8.3x. Brands mostly keep their Black Friday rank from year to year, so your own last Black Friday is a useful anchor.
The median was 4.8x in 2023 and 2024, then 4.3x in 2025. Each season uses its own brands; on the same brands, the Black Friday multiple fell about 7% (section 4).
Black Friday orders as a multiple of each brand’s own average October day, median brand and percentiles across 2023 to 2025. The 90th percentile is about ten times the 10th.
After an unusually strong or weak Black Friday, brands tend to drift back toward their usual level
About 3 in 4 brands land between half and 1.5 times their previous year’s Black Friday multiple (Black Friday orders divided by their average October day), and about half land within 25% of it. An unusually strong or weak year tends to land closer to the brand’s usual level the next year.
Apparel, Home & Outdoors and higher-priced brands see the biggest Black Friday lifts
Food & Drug brands see the smallest. The lift rises with a brand’s normal order value (its January-to-September average order value), then levels off above $117. On Black Friday, stores selling in US dollars saw about 5.1x their average October daily orders, compared with about 3.6x for stores selling in euros and 3.2x in pounds, a gap that held in all three years.
Lower-priced and consumable brands see revenue rise faster than orders
At the median brand, BFCM average order value (AOV) is up about 1% on its January-to-September level, so revenue moves about in step with orders.
Lower-priced and consumable brands are the exception: their order lift is smaller, but each order is bigger. Each group’s BFCM AOV, compared with its own January to September:
Brands with a normal order under $73 ¹: AOV up 9%. On Black Friday itself, their revenue reached about 3.9x their average October day, compared with 3.6x in orders.
Food & Drug brands ²: AOV up 9%.
Health & Beauty brands ³: AOV up 6%.
For these brands, an order count understates Black Friday, because revenue rose faster than orders. Our data can’t show whether buyers stocked up.
| Brand group | Black Friday orders vs average October day | BFCM average order value vs January to September |
|---|---|---|
| All brands | 4.6x | +1% |
| By category | ||
| Apparel | 6.0x | −2% |
| Home & Outdoors | 5.9x | −1% |
| Health & Beauty ³ | 4.1x | +6% |
| Food & Drug ² | 2.8x | +9% |
| By normal order value | ||
| Under $73 ¹ | 3.6x | +9% |
| $73 to $117 | 5.4x | +3% |
| $117 to $211 | 6.3x | −3% |
| Over $211 | 6.1x | −2% |
Median brand, 2023 to 2025. Price groups are US-dollar brands in four equal groups by normal order. Consumables brands sit mostly in the lower price groups.
How to plan for BFCM 2026
To forecast your Black Friday, start from your own 2025 multiple, not the 4.6x median. If 2025 ran unusually strong or weak for you, expect 2026 to land closer to your usual level.
Forecasting without a clean prior year? Start from your category or price row. Food & Drug brands see about 2.8x their average October daily orders on Black Friday, and stores selling in euros or pounds 3.2x to 3.6x (see above), so the 4.6x all-brand median would likely overplan them.
Daily orders step up about 8% on November 1, peak on Black Friday, then settle near 1.3x to 1.4x an average October day through mid-December before dropping below October from about December 21, and each key date lands within a few days of the same date every year. After Black Friday, orders fall back before settling there.
Median brand’s daily orders vs its own average October day, with 2023 to 2025 lined up on Black Friday and shown on 2026 dates. Navy is the three-season median.
| Key date (2026) | Daily orders vs average October day, median brand |
|---|---|
| Week of Nov 1 | About 1.08x, the step-up that starts the season; above October until about December 21 |
| Nov 16 to 22 | Biggest week-over-week rise before Thanksgiving |
| Thanksgiving, Thu, Nov 26 | About 2x |
| Black Friday, Fri, Nov 27 | 4.6x, the biggest day of the year |
| Sat, Nov 28 and Sun, Nov 29 | About 3x a day |
| Cyber Monday, Mon, Nov 30 | About 3.8x; above Black Friday at about 3 brands in 10 |
| Sun, Dec 13 and Mon, Dec 14 | About 1.4x, a smaller rise |
| From Mon, Dec 21 | Below 1.0x, with a low of about 0.6x on Christmas Eve |
Typical dates, not forecasts: each event sits at its three-year average distance from Black Friday.
Cyber Monday orders arrive later in the day than on a normal October Monday
In 2025, 38% of the median brand’s Cyber Monday orders came after 6 p.m., compared with 30% on a normal October Monday. The median brand’s busiest Cyber Monday hour was 8 p.m., with 7.1% of the day’s orders (shop local time), and 2024 followed the same pattern.
How to plan for BFCM 2026
Expect about an 8% lift on November 1 before any campaign runs. Daily orders step up that much on November 1 every year, whatever the weekday, so judge early-November campaigns against it.
Cyber Monday’s evening is its busiest stretch, so move customer-service and site-monitoring cover there.
The faster a brand’s orders rose from November 16 to 22, the bigger its Black Friday. Brands whose daily orders that week ran above about 2.2x their October average (the top 25%) went on to about 9x their October daily orders on Black Friday, and almost 9 in 10 of them beat the median brand. Brands still at or below their October level (the bottom 25%) saw about 2.3x, and about 3 in 4 finished below the median.
Brands are grouped by their Nov 16 to 22 daily orders vs their own average October day, pooled 2023 to 2025; each bar is the median Black Friday multiple for that band. Ranges overlap widely, so treat the week as an early read, not a forecast.
In every category we show, brands that paced faster had bigger Black Fridays
Check your pace each Monday with the free BFCM pacing calculator
Enter your October orders and last week’s orders, and the calculator shows your pace (last week’s average daily orders divided by your average October day) against brands in your industry and size, and against your own 2025 if you add it. On Monday, November 23, your November 16 to 22 result places you in a pace band; the median brand runs about 1.4x that week.
For December 7 to 13, the median brand runs about 1.3x its average October day, and consumables brands often run below October, so compare with your own last December first.
How to plan for BFCM 2026
Use November 16 to 22 to predict your Black Friday. On Monday, November 23, find your pace in the category table, then use your row’s median to set Black Friday ad budget, staffing and fulfillment cover while there are still four days to adjust them.
The five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday carry about 18% of the median brand’s November and December orders, and Black Friday alone about 5%. Half of the season’s orders land in the three weeks around Black Friday.
A weaker Black Friday didn’t mean a weaker holiday season
Measured on the same brands, each against its own October, Black Friday orders fell about 7% in 2025, in every category and at 58% of brands. November and December orders stayed within about 2% of 2024.
A bigger BFCM didn’t mean a weaker January to March
The usual worry is that heavy BFCM discounts pull full-price orders out of January to March. Our data shows no sign of it.
Brand by brand, BFCM growth and first-quarter growth moved together: a brand whose BFCM orders grew 10% more than the year before saw January to March orders grow about 3% to 4% more. That most likely reflects a good year overall, not BFCM itself.
January holds up too: in each of the last three seasons, the median brand’s January orders ran about 5% above its average October day, and fewer than half of brands fell below October.
How to plan for BFCM 2026
Plan for the weeks around Black Friday, not just the five days. Half of the median brand’s November and December orders land in the three weeks around Black Friday.
Forecast January to March from your year’s overall trend, not from how BFCM went.
BFCM first-time buyers are about 30% less likely than October’s to reorder within 90 days. But BFCM brings in about 3.5x as many first-time buyers a day, so it still adds more returning customers than October does.
At 30 days, 90 days or six months, BFCM buyers reorder less
Compared with October’s first-time buyers, BFCM’s reordered about a quarter less within 30 days, about 30% less within 90 days and about a quarter less within six months (median brand, 2024 season).
The closer to Black Friday a first-time buyer arrives, the less likely they are to reorder: within 90 days, about 10% of October’s reordered, against about 9% of early November’s and about 7% of BFCM’s.
Limits on the reorder numbers
Reorders count only where our survey appeared, so true rates are likely higher. Compare BFCM with October rather than reading either rate alone.
These windows don’t measure lifetime value.
How to plan for BFCM 2026
Judge BFCM buyers’ second-purchase flows against a lower reorder rate than October’s. Within 90 days they reordered about 30% less often, at 7% against 10% in the 2024 season.
At the median brand, the share of orders using a discount code runs about 4 to 5 percentage points below its own October share from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday (2024 and 2025). Many brands credit influencers, affiliates and podcasts by the discount code a buyer types at checkout, so a lower code share means a code report credits a smaller part of BFCM orders. Over November and December as a whole, the median brand’s code share runs about 2 percentage points below October, so the drop is sharpest over the five BFCM days.
On Black Friday, orders using a code grew far less than total orders
At the median brand, orders using a code reached about 2.4x their October daily code orders on Black Friday, compared with about 4.7x for total orders at the same brands. Code orders rose about half as fast as orders overall, so the share of Black Friday orders with a code fell. At about 1 in 3 brands, Black Friday’s code orders were below an average October day’s, even as total orders surged.
One likely reason is that many stores run their BFCM offer as an automatic discount, such as $20 off orders over $100, which applies at checkout without a code. Our data records only typed codes, so we can’t measure how much this explains.
Why the share of orders with a code falls at BFCM
If buyers behaved the same way on Black Friday as in October, code orders would grow at the same rate as total orders. They grew about half as fast, so something changed. Three things drive it, and the data can’t fully separate them:
More buyers come from channels that rarely use codes. Friends and family grows faster than any other answer at BFCM.
Buyers in every channel use fewer codes. In our survey report, code use fell for customers from every channel we measured, influencer customers included, so it isn’t only a shift in mix.
Automatic discounts don’t count as codes. A brand running a sitewide automatic Black Friday discount will show a lower code share for that reason alone.
On Black Friday, code share fell more for first-time buyers than for returning customers
On Black Friday 2025, the share of first-time buyers’ orders with a code fell about 10 percentage points from October at the median brand, against about 6 points for returning customers. First-time buyers’ share fell further at about 6 in 10 brands. (Brands with enough first-time and returning orders to compare.)
When Black Friday code share rises, it’s usually one sale code, not more partner sales
At about 1 in 3 brands, code share rose 2 percentage points or more above October on Black Friday. At those brands, one code, usually named for the sale, carried about 83% of Black Friday code orders (median, 2024 and 2025). So a rising code share at peak mostly reflects the sale code, and the code report can’t tell you which partner sent those buyers.
How to plan for BFCM 2026
Judge partner code orders against your total code orders, not total orders. On Black Friday, code orders reached about 2.4x their October daily level at the median brand, against about 4.7x for total orders at the same brands.
Agree partner credit rules before the offer goes live, since a sitewide sale code or an automatic discount hides which partner sent the buyer. If you switched between the two, code share isn’t comparable across years.
Use a post-purchase survey to credit buyers who skip a code. Ask “How did you hear about us?” after checkout; from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, first-time buyers answer its first question at a rate about 2 percentage points below October.
About the data
Who’s in it. Orders from 2,200+ established Shopify and ecommerce brands running Fairing’s post-purchase survey, October to December in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
How we measure. Every brand is measured against its own average October day, and we report the median brand, with the middle half of brands as the range.
Limits. These are established brands on Fairing, not a random sample of online stores, and year-over-year trends rest on three seasons.
