Complete Guide To Saving Money On Amazon (Save 8% – 27%+)

November 26, 2021
171 Comments
by William Charles

The majority of readers will spend a lot of money on Amazon. There are a lot of different ways to save money on Amazon purchases so I thought I’d create a post that lists all of the different ways to save on these purchases so readers can bookmark this page and quickly reference it whenever making purchases from Amazon. Links marked with * contain our affiliate link and we receive a commission based on your purchases.

Credit Card/Gift Card

The first step is to decide whether to use a credit card or gift card. This option will depend on what promotions and credit cards you have available.

Credit Cards

You might be eligible for one of the following offers. Tip: check to see a list of cards you have enrolled with Shop With Points at this Amazon link*.

Other credit card tips and offers:

Gift Cards

There are three promotions that are always available, but you can only do them once. Plus other limited time bonuses:

Your best option with the first two of the above promotions is to still use a credit card that earns at a high rate on Amazon purchases. Lots of stores also sell Amazon gift cards and if you have a credit card that earns a category bonus for those stores then you could easily purchase Amazon gift cards there. For example if you had a Chase Ink Cash card you could buy them at Staples.com and earn 5% cash back. You can view all the credit cards that earn at least 4%/4x here.

Additional some stores will have discounts that might be useful for stocking up on Amazon gift cards:

  • American Express regularly have AmEx offers that can be used to purchase Amazon gift cards, we will update this section when one of these promotions is available (currently one available here)
  • A lot of grocery stores have fuel rewards programs and usually Amazon gift cards will trigger points for these programs. Sometimes they have increased offers for up to 4x points.

Checking Account

If you don’t have access to a credit card or debit card you can link your checking account to Amazon. They’ll also give you a 2% bonus, more details here.

Shopping Portals

Most shopping portals (e.g Topcashback) will offer 6% in specific categories (this currently isn’t true as Amazon has been pulled from most portals). These categories change from time to time and the portal offering the best rates also changes from time to time. You can view the best rates here. Keep in mind Ibotta usually has some extra categories that other portals do not have. JetBlue used to offer 3 JetBlue points on all purchases, but that is unfortunately no longer the case.

If you’d like to support this site, you can also do so by using our Amazon link found here*. Just keep in mind you won’t earn any portal rewards if you do use our link.

Discount Codes

It’s possible to get discount codes for Amazon that work on all purchases. In particular there are three worth keeping in mind:

Amazon Prime Offers

You can usually get a discount on new Amazon Prime subscriptions. Here is what is currently available:

If you’re new to Prime then I recommend reading this guide to maximizing your Prime account. As a prime member you also get discounts at Whole Foods.

Other Promotions/Discounts/Freebies

Amazon often has specific discounts that might be of interest to some readers, we will post the more popular ones here.

Discounted items:

Give To Charity For Free

AmazonSmile is Amazon’s charitable arm, by enrolling you can select a charity and they will receive 0.5% of the price of your eligible AmazonSmile purchases. Your shopping needs to start with smile.amazon.com to be eligible.

You can stack this with JetBlue according to this comment (JetBlue portal no longer works, but other portals should work on specific categories). This is also officially confirmed by Amazon here. Read more about Amazon Smile and how to stack it with a shopping portal in this post.

Price Check

Prices on Amazon fluctuate constantly and it can be difficult to know if you’re getting a good price or not. I use camelcamelcamel to easily see the price history for specific items. You can also set up alerts if it’s a non urgent item.

Opening A New Account

There are several perks to opening a new account. This is discussed in detail here.

Misc

This is just for miscellaneous pieces of information.

Our Verdict

Hopefully you learned a new way to save a bit of money on Amazon purchases. As I mentioned earlier, we do appreciate readers who use our Amazon links* but at the end of the day I like to think that our job is to save and make you as much money as possible so I think it’s important to point out that by using our links you are forgoing other options (e.g possibly 6% cash back). Did I miss any ways to save money on Amazon? As mentioned I’ll be keeping this up to date, so feel free to bookmark this page for later reference. Also I’ve marked links that are our Amazon link with a * throughout this post.

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171 Comments
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Pablo
Pablo (@guest_1766091)
December 27, 2023 17:45
#1766091

Anyone know if it is possible to do Shop with Points using Amex rewards checking debit card? Earned some Amex reward points but when trying to enroll the card on Amazon, it gives me an error. Maybe they don’t support that card at the moment. Anyone else can chime in?

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Pablo
Pablo (@guest_1766032)
December 27, 2023 16:41
#1766032

I always wondered if after redeeming a promo, we should remove the card and then add it back later when the next promo comes around (if it helps improve our chance of being targeted) or I guess it depends on which promo like if it is Chase, Citi or Amex for example.

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Pablo
Pablo (@guest_1766092)
December 27, 2023 17:46
#1766092
  Pablo

I guess if it’s the add Amex/Citi, get $15 off, then that is where you want to make sure you don’t have the card in the account previously so you can be targeted for those promos. But then you have to juggle between that and the promos where you need to register the card for using shop with points to get 50% off for example

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jojomojo
jojomojo (@guest_1712936)
October 10, 2023 20:37
#1712936

I think the 1121GCARDS promo is dead  Chuck

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fdic
fdic (@guest_1506232)
December 10, 2022 12:15
#1506232

Thank you!

0
Reply
Duck Donuts
Duck Donuts (@guest_1505540)
December 9, 2022 10:58
#1505540

Waited to use the Citi 40% off for Apple gift card promo. Was working yesterday, now does not work. Damn – shouldn’t have been greedy

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sidra1968
sidra1968 (@guest_1492113)
November 20, 2022 10:06
#1492113

Thanks for this!!

0
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Pat
Pat (@guest_1406310)
July 8, 2022 14:11
#1406310

Just redeemed the Chase offer for 50% Safeway gift card at Amazon. Used my Freedom card.

0
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Dave
Dave (@guest_1397853)
June 20, 2022 03:38
#1397853

Amex offer extended until 8/22. Discover offer seems to be dead.

1
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Miki
Miki (@guest_1406178)
July 8, 2022 10:16
#1406178
  Dave

Where did you see that?

Still shows this text for me “This is a limited time offer. The promotion will end on the earlier of (a) 12:59pm PT on 7/21/2022, or (b) the time at which 12,759 customers have redeemed the offer. The promotion button will expire concurrently.”

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Miki
Miki (@guest_1406179)
July 8, 2022 10:17
#1406179
  Dave

#fake news 😀

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Matt
Matt (@guest_1326441)
February 4, 2022 16:34
#1326441

The Amazon AMEX promo link is active again. I just had (and redeemed) a “Get $10 off with Membership Rewards points (minimum purchase of $100)” offer.  William Charles  Chuck

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Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
February 5, 2022 22:07
#1326876
  Matt

Thanks, I’ll update

0
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calwatch
calwatch (@guest_1290165)
November 27, 2021 04:39
#1290165

The easiest way IMHO is to buy GC at grocery stores and other places where there is an AMEX offer or Chase offer. Those $50 or $100 can add up.

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