These days, Black Friday is the longest day of the year. November is only half way through, but amazing deals are already popping up for some of our favorite subscription services. It’s a great time to lock down a long-term deal on the streaming platform, but there’s plenty more to do, including a big discount on Quicken (which you can use to chart all the money you’ve saved) and one of the best offers I’ve ever seen for DeleteMe (which wipes your personal data off the Internet when you return it with your new Amazon Prime Video subscription). We’ll update this list for the rest of the month as new deals go live.
Best Black Friday Subscription Deals
master Class
MasterClass is one of our favorite gift subscriptions. If you often find yourself on the Internet without knowing why, MasterClass has hundreds of celebrity-based courses to help you make the most of that time. Each is divided into bite-sized videos so you can control how much you study at a time. Highlights at the moment include creative writing classes from Margaret Atwood, home cooking lessons from Alice Waters, and a crash course in battlefield tactics from General Stanley McChrystal.
$90 at MasterClass (50 percent off).
Quicken Simplify (one year) for $36 (50 percent off): We named Quicken Simplify the best budgeting app this year because it lives up to its name. It’s the cleanest budgeting app on the market, with an interface designed to be welcoming to newcomers and with important information no more than a scroll away. It’s also cheap, especially with this Black Friday deal, and great at tracking and categorizing your important transactions.
Monarch Money (one year) for $50 (50 percent off with code MONARCHVIP): Monarch Money, our other favorite budgeting app, is offering new users half off for Black Friday. It’s a little more complex than Quicken Simplify, but it also gives you better control, including detailed reporting, balance sheets, and instant graphs. The Extra Goals feature lets you set baselines of savings and money that feel amazing when you reach them.
Rosetta Stone Lifetime Unlimited Subscription for $149 (60 percent off): Rosetta Stone was a pioneer in visual language courses at a time when software still came in boxes, and it’s still one of the best language learning apps. Today, its method works the same as before with patient learning based on pictures, words and recordings. This deal gives you full lifetime membership with access to all 25 languages in the library.
Audible (three months) for $3 (80 percent off): For literally $1 per month, you can get access to Audible’s massive library of published audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals (which can be anything from never-before-heard books to live performances). It’s only three months, after which you must cancel or renew at the regular price, but an audiobibliophile can listen to a lot in 90 days.
Headspace for $35 (one year) (50 percent off): Of all the meditation apps available, Headspace is our favorite. It not only helps you relax and relieve stress, but also teaches you to practice meditation as a skill, with sessions based on each other in organized courses. There’s a huge library of standalone guided meditations with all kinds of instructors, and it’s easy to find the one that works best for you. This deal gives you half off for the entire year.
:Once you’ve finished your headspace meditation, turn to every other stress-relieving activity you can think of. This packed subscription gives you a vast library of relaxing content, ranging from music and soothing soundscapes to its popular “Bedtime Stories”, in which celebrity narrators tell bedtime stories for children and adults. If you’ve ever wanted to be serenaded by Harry Styles, Matthew McConaughey or Idris Elba, this is the app for you.
1 Password for $24 (one year) (50 percent off): Using a password manager is one of the most important cybersecurity steps you can take right now. 1Password creates strong, unique passwords for every account, then saves them to autofill when needed. We named it the best password manager in honor of its well-designed user interface and cross-platform compatibility.
Adobe Creative Cloud (one year) for $420 (50 percent off): Creative Cloud is Adobe’s most comprehensive design package, including InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, and more than 20 other apps. Create a website with Dreamweaver, paint on a digital canvas with Fresco, or edit photos in Lightroom. This costs a lot for an individual, but puts a one-year subscription within reach of a creative business.
The best TV and streaming Black Friday deals
fubo
Fubo is a live TV service that helps sports fans stay tuned to the game. When you sign up, it asks you for your favorite teams, then automatically records every game they play. Fubo Pro includes 249 channels, covering everything from your local NFL and NBA networks to original ESPN8 (The Ocho) content like PowerSports World. There are plenty of non-sports channels too, and with 10 allowed screens per subscription, your whole family can enjoy the selection at once.
$55 at fubo.tv (35 percent off).
Plex (lifetime pass) for $150 (40 percent off): Plex offers personal media servers that you can use to organize your digital collection – imagine your own curated Netflix homepage where nothing is ever missing. It is a streaming platform in itself, with movies and TV from all genres and eras. Plex recently raised its prices, so now you have a chance to get a lifetime pass for close to the previous price.
Sling TV Orange Day Pass for $1 (80 percent off): Sling TV is one of the best live streaming services, and has one of the most unique deals in streaming TV: a commitment-free day pass that lets you stream whatever you want for 24 hours, including cable channels and exclusive sports. Normally, a day pass costs $5, but this Black Friday deal brings the price down to $1.
Walmart+ (one year) for $49 (50 percent off): No, Walmart isn’t launching its own streaming platform, but it’ll probably make for some pretty cool drama. what you to do With Walmart+ there’s free shipping on carts over $35, special deals, drone delivery in some cities, and more. And if you’re here for streaming, Walmart+ comes with your choice of Paramount+ Essentials for Peacock Premium (we recommend Peacock Premium as it’s more expensive on its own).
Best VPN Deals for Black Friday
proton
This is our pick – a secure, reliable app that doesn’t sacrifice features, speed or usability. Although its free plan comes with unlimited data, we recommend upgrading to get the full set of servers and features. This deal will get you servers in 117 countries; Even better, every one of the ones we’ve tested so far can unblock Netflix.
$59.76 at Proton (75 percent off).
Surfshark Starter (27 months) for $53.73 (87 percent off): According to the tests we conducted for our latest review, Surfshark is the fastest VPN right now, with its download speeds, upload speeds, and latency beating all competitors. There’s more to it than just speed, as it’s able to constantly rotate your IP address and generate double VPN paths between any two servers you choose.
NordVPN Basic (27 months) for $80.73 (74 percent off): NordVPN received very positive marks in our previous review, where we mentioned its fast Internet speeds, wide network of server locations, and selection of exclusive features. It comes with a range of dedicated servers for obfuscation, onion routing, torrenting, and more. Plus, it’s one of the first VPNs to make the leap to post-quantum encryption.
CyberGhost VPN (28 months) for $56.84 (84 percent off)CyberGhost has always been cheap – in fact, we named it the best budget VPN – but it’s never behaved like an affordable option. Its Smart Rules automation controls are the deepest in the industry, and its server network reaches 100 countries. The speeds are also quite good, although it sometimes takes a while for the connection to be established.
Private Internet Access VPN (40 months) for $79.20 (83 percent off): Although we weren’t entirely positive about Private Internet Access (PIA VPN) in our recent review, we can’t deny that it’s a worthwhile option for an affordable VPN. Although speeds can fluctuate, it comes with several desirable features on all platforms, such as port forwarding (which makes torrents more stable) and two types of split tunneling.