Bin store prices follow one rule almost everywhere: the price is per item, it is highest on the day the bins are refilled, and it drops every day until the next restock. What that ladder looks like in practice — and how many stores really run a $1 day — is something we can measure, because across 501 stores in our directory as of August 2026, 261 stores publish a numeric weekday ladder. Every figure below is computed from those listings (data as of August 25, 2026); the 71 stores that list “prices vary” all week are excluded from the maths.
The standard weekly price ladder
The standard bin store ladder opens at $10 on restock day and steps down to $1 over the week. The most common schedule is Mon $5, Tue $3, Wed $1, Thu $1, Fri $10, Sat $10, Sun $5. 57.5% of stores are priciest on Friday; 45.2% are cheapest on Wednesday.
The table shows, for each weekday, how many of the 261 ladder stores list a numeric price that day, the most common and median price, the range, and how many are closed. Two things stand out. First, the ladder is not a smooth curve: it jumps on Friday (most common $10) and collapses by Wednesday (most common $1). Second, Thursday is the odd day out — only 98 stores list a price and 146 are closed, because many stores shut for a day to refill before the Friday restock.
Weekday price ladder across 501 stores in our directory as of August 2026 (261 stores with numeric prices). | Day | Stores with a price | Most common | Median | Lowest | Highest | Closed | $1 or less |
|---|
| Monday | 241 | $5 | $4 | $1 | $10 | 14 | 14 |
| Tuesday | 234 | $3 | $3 | $1 | $10 | 20 | 42 |
| Wednesday | 210 | $1 | $1 | $0.50 | $14 | 44 | 112 |
| Thursday | 98 | $1 | $1 | $0.50 | $13 | 146 | 56 |
| Friday | 194 | $10 | $10 | $0.50 | $20 | 59 | 19 |
| Saturday | 248 | $10 | $8 | $0.25 | $30 | 7 | 9 |
| Sunday | 233 | $5 | $6 | $1 | $15 | 23 | 3 |
Most ladders have 6 distinct price steps across the week (1 store use 2, 5 stores use 3, 21 stores use 4, 52 stores use 5, 101 stores use 6, 54 stores use 7). A 6-step ladder means the price changes almost every open day, so the day you visit matters more than the store you pick. The opening price is $10 at 78 stores, $12 at 41 and $8 at 34; 83 stores open above $10 and the highest opening price listed anywhere is $30.
What $1 day really means
$1 day is the last full-price step before the restock: 218 of the 261 ladder stores (83.5%) list a day at $1 or less, most often on Wednesday (112 stores). Nothing is free — 0 stores list a $0 day — and only 14 go below $1.
“$1 day” is not a promotion; it is the bottom rung of the ladder. By the time a store reaches it the bins have been dug through for four or five days, so what is left is what nobody wanted at $10, $5 or $3. That is still a real bargain for bulk buyers — resellers filling boxes of small accessories, crafters, anyone who values volume over selection — but a first-timer expecting the restock-day haul at $1 will be disappointed.
Which weekday is the $1 day, for the 218 stores that have one. | Day | Stores with $1 day | Share |
|---|
| Monday | 14 | 6.4% |
| Tuesday | 42 | 19.3% |
| Wednesday | 112 | 51.4% |
| Thursday | 56 | 25.7% |
| Friday | 19 | 8.7% |
| Saturday | 9 | 4.1% |
| Sunday | 3 | 1.4% |
The cheapest-day picture is nearly identical even for stores whose floor is above $1: 45.2% of ladder stores hit their lowest price on Wednesday, 19.5% on Thursday. The median cheapest price is $1 and the most common is $1; 204 stores bottom out at exactly $1, 30 at $2, and 11 at $0.5.
Cheapest day of the week per store. | Day | Stores | Share |
|---|
| Monday | 19 | 7.3% |
| Tuesday | 48 | 18.4% |
| Wednesday | 118 | 45.2% |
| Thursday | 51 | 19.5% |
| Friday | 13 | 5% |
| Saturday | 9 | 3.4% |
| Sunday | 3 | 1.1% |
Real price tables from 500+ US stores
These are the published Monday-to-Sunday ladders of 8 stores in 8 different states, taken from their own listings. They show the two common shapes: a $1–$15 ladder that runs every day, and a shorter ladder with closed days used to refill.
7 Days Liquidation Bin Store in Indio, CA is the textbook version: $6 → $4 → $2 → $1 → $15 → $12 → $10 across seven open days, with a $1–$15 range that 13 other stores in the directory match exactly. 1440 Wholesale Fort Smith in Fort Smith, AR runs the same idea with two closed days mid-week, so its $1–$10 ladder has only five steps. Ashland Outlet & Bins in Ashland, KY is one of the few example stores whose listing also names a restock day (Friday), and its ladder confirms it — $8 on Friday falling to $1 by Wednesday.
Across all 261 ladder stores, the most common single price on any day is $1 (241 store-days), followed by $3 (189) and $5 (179). Weekend closures are rare — 7 ladder stores close on Saturday and 23 on Sunday — because the weekend sits at the expensive, fresh-stock end of the week.
Amazon bin stores vs Goodwill outlets on price
Amazon bin stores charge per item on a falling weekday ladder; Goodwill outlets charge by weight, with 162 of the 166 outlets in the directory listed as pay-by-the-pound. Shopper reviews quote rates from $0.59 a pound to $2/lb, and the rate is set by the regional Goodwill, not the day.
The two models reward different shoppers. A per-item ladder makes a heavy vacuum cleaner and a phone case cost the same $1 on the cheapest day, so bulky, high-retail items are where a bin store's value concentrates. Per-pound pricing punishes weight: at $1.25/lb (Goodwill Outlet Bellmawr) a jacket is cheap and a cast-iron pan is not. Outlets also carve out exceptions — furniture, electronics, books and media are often priced per piece rather than weighed.
The per-pound quotes above come from customer reviews and outlet notes collected with the listings, not from Goodwill price lists, and several reviewers mention increases (for example the $1.00 a pound quote at Goodwill Outlet Jacksonville is described as out of date in the same review). Treat them as a range, and read the pay-by-the-pound guide for the state-by-state picture.
Is it cheaper than thrifting?
Per item, yes: a $1 floor and a $10 ceiling undercut most thrift-store price tags for anything larger than a T-shirt. Per hour of your time, it depends — the stock is unsorted, unreturnable and often incomplete, and 18.1% of the 1,043 bin-store reviews we hold are one star.
A thrift store prices each item individually and lets you see the whole rack at once. A bin store charges a flat rate but makes you dig, and what you find is returns: opened packaging, missing accessories, the occasional item that does not work. Reviews in the directory reflect that split — 56.4% of bin-store reviews are five stars and 18.1% are one star, with little in between, and the average sits at 3.8 out of 5. The people who love it are buying on Wednesdays in volume; the people who hate it paid $10 for something broken on restock day.
Against Goodwill's outlets the comparison flips by category: clothing is usually cheaper by the pound ($0.59 a pound at Goodwill Outlet Columbus), while anything heavy or high-retail is cheaper on a bin store's $1 day. The honest summary is in are bin stores worth it?; how the cycle works day to day is in how do bin stores work?.
Find a $1 day near you
The ten biggest state directories all have a median floor price of $1 or close to it; the difference is how many stores publish a ladder. Florida (20 ladders among 37 open stores) and North Carolina (27 of 35) publish the most ladders; the most published $1 days are in North Carolina (24) and Ohio (18).
Every state page — Florida, California, Texas and the rest on the state index — prints each store's own ladder inline, so you can scan a whole state for the day you plan to shop. The Amazon bin store hub lists the same stores by state as compact cards, and the restock guide covers the other half of the timing question: which day the $10 bins arrive.
Bin store prices drop through the week on a set schedule. Here is the real Monday-through-Sunday ladder, plus per-state price medians, from across 501 stores in our directory as of August 2026.
The Monday-to-Sunday bin store price ladder
Across stores that publish a numeric price ladder, the median bin store price starts at $4 on Monday, bottoms out at $1 on Wednesday and Thursday, then climbs back to $10 on Friday and $8 on Saturday. That is the standard bin store pricing schedule, and it repeats every week after restock.
The ladder is easiest to read as a mode, the single price most stores actually charge that day. Monday's mode is $5, Tuesday drops to $3, and Wednesday and Thursday both sit at $1. Friday and Saturday jump to $10, then Sunday settles back to $5. That dip-and-climb shape is the whole story of how bin store pricing works: fresh inventory opens expensive, and the price falls as the bins get picked over.
Most ladders are not seven equal steps. The median store runs 6 distinct price steps, and the most common count is 6 steps. That usually means two or three cheap days, a mid-range day or two, and a couple of high-priced weekend days rather than a smooth daily slide.
Most common bin price by weekday| Day | Most common | Median |
|---|
| Monday | $5 | $4 |
| Tuesday | $3 | $3 |
| Wednesday | $1 | $1 |
| Thursday | $1 | $1 |
| Friday | $10 | $10 |
| Saturday | $10 | $8 |
| Sunday | $5 | $6 |
What this means in practice is that the cheapest day is not a coin flip. Wednesday is the cheapest day at 45.2% of stores, and Tuesday or Thursday covers most of the rest. Friday is the priciest day at 57.5% of stores. If you want the full breakdown of which day wins, our cheapest day at a bin store guide walks through it, and the $1 day page covers the single most common bottom price.
There are also real exceptions. 71 stores list "prices vary" for every day with no numeric ladder at all, so they are excluded from these medians. And about 83 stores open their week above $10, topping out at $30. Those outliers pull the mean up even when the mode stays low, which is why the median is the more honest number for planning a trip.
Bin store prices by state
The median cheapest price is $1 in almost every state we track, but the priciest end of the ladder varies by region: among the largest state directories it runs from $7 in Oklahoma to $12 in Florida, and the full table below spans $2 in Massachusetts to $20 in Maine once single-store states are counted. Your local bin store cost depends more on your state than on the chain you shop.
The table below shows the states with the most bin stores in our directory, ranked by total listings (open plus permanently closed); the "Open stores" column counts only the open ones. The two columns that matter for budgeting are the median cheapest price and the median priciest price, because those are the bookends of the typical bin store pricing schedule in that state.
Florida and California lead the directory with 37 and 35 open stores respectively, and both bottom out at $1. But Florida's priciest median is $12, a couple of dollars above California's $10. That is a real difference if you are filling a cart on a weekend, so check the state page before you assume every bin store cost is the same.
The cheapest day also shifts by state. Wednesday is the most common cheapest day in Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Ohio, but Oklahoma and Missouri run their bottom price on Tuesday, and California and Virginia hit it on Thursday. That matters because the restock schedule usually lands the day before the ladder resets, so a Thursday-bottom state is often restocking Friday.
For a concrete example, $5 Gold Diggers in Oklahoma runs a $1 Tuesday bottom inside a $1–$5 range, while 7 Days Liquidation Bin Store in California bottoms at $1 on Thursday. Browse the bin store directory or the guides hub to see every state's numbers, and note that Goodwill outlets price by the pound instead — see Goodwill outlet prices for that separate system.
