How to find good deals on running shoes

The single biggest saving in running shoes is buying the previous version of a model once its replacement comes out. Most popular road shoes are updated about once a year, the changes are usually incremental, and stores clear the old version to make room. 41% of the models in our fresh sample have a listing at least 40% below the store’s list price.

See what each version costs today: Nike Vomero, Hoka Bondi, Brooks Ghost, Nike Pegasus.

Stores discount individual sizes, not whole shoes. The “60% off” on a sale page is often a single leftover size. In our data, men's size 10 is in stock in 78% of eligible model/width combinations, while men's 16 is listed in 2% — and when it is, it costs about 10% more than the cheapest size of the same model and width.

Filter by your size before you get attached to a price. Every listing on our deals pagecan be filtered by men's or women's US size, and the price shown is the one you'd pay in that size. If you wear a hard-to-find size, start with our men's size 14 or women's size 6 pages.

The same shoe is often on sale at very different prices at the same time. Right now the Saucony Endorphin Elite 2 ranges from $124.88 to $234.95 across 9 stores in our fresh sample (sizes, widths and colors differ). Specialty run shops, big-box retailers and brand stores all set their own markdowns, and they rarely move together. Checking one store's sale page is how people overpay.

A discount is measured against the list price, which says nothing about whether this is a good time to buy. Compare against the shoe's recent low instead: each model page on this site shows the lowest price we've recorded in the last 90 days and a price history chart. If today's price is at or near that low, it's a good price.

The same model in a less popular colorway is often discounted further, sometimes by a lot. If you care more about the shoe than the color, open the model page and sort through colors in your size — each one shows its own lowest price.

Deep discounts cluster around new version launches, end-of-season clearance, and major sale events like Black Friday. But the most common sizes sell out first. If the shoe you want is already near its recorded low in your size, waiting mostly risks losing your size.

Independent running shops run excellent online sales that big deal sites miss, and they often have the widest size runs on clearance. Most of the stores we track are independent shops, and their prices are included in every comparison here.

Some of the deepest discounts are marked final sale. If you haven't worn that exact model (or version) before, a slightly higher price with free returns can be the better deal.

We publish the week's best running shoe deals every Thursday, picked from live prices, and the Running Shoe Price Index tracks discounts by brand, store and size.