Subscriptions are unusually easy to lose track of, because each one is small enough not to trigger a decision. A 2022 C+R Research study of 1,000 US consumers found people guessed they spent about $86/month when the real average was $219 — a gap of $133 a month that nobody had consciously agreed to.
Spendly’s subscription tracker helps you see every recurring charge in one place so you can decide what’s worth keeping.
Common Subscriptions People Track
Most people underestimate both the number and the cost of their active subscriptions. Here’s what a typical subscription stack looks like:
| Category | Examples | Typical Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming video | Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Max, YouTube Premium | $15-20/mo each |
| Streaming music | Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal | $11-17/mo |
| Cloud storage | iCloud, Google One, Dropbox | $3-10/mo |
| Gym & fitness | Gym membership, Peloton, fitness apps | $30-60/mo |
| News & media | NYT, WSJ, The Athletic, Substack newsletters | $5-15/mo each |
| Productivity | Microsoft 365, Notion, Todoist, 1Password | $3-14/mo |
| Delivery & food | DoorDash DashPass, Uber One, meal kits | $10-15/mo |
| Shopping | Amazon Prime, Costco, Walmart+ | $7-15/mo |
| Software & apps | Adobe Creative Cloud, VPN, language learning | $5-55/mo |
A household with just one streaming service, a music subscription, cloud storage, a gym, a news site, and Amazon Prime is already spending $100-150/month — around $1,200-1,800 per year. Add a second streaming service, a food delivery pass, and a couple of productivity tools, and you’re easily past $200/month.
Spendly tracks all of these in a single view so you can see the real total instead of guessing.
How Subscription Tracking Works
Spendly tracks subscriptions as commitments. You add each one once — name, amount, currency, how often it bills, and the date of the next charge — and from then on Spendly maintains the ledger:
- A complete list of every recurring charge you’ve entered, in one view
- A true monthly and annual total, with weekly, quarterly and yearly billing all normalised to the same basis
- Renewal warnings seven days ahead of a due date
- Category tagging so subscriptions roll into your budgets and reports like any other spending
- Cash flow impact, so upcoming renewals appear in your 90-day forecast rather than ambushing you
Why you confirm each one
Spendly won’t silently decide what counts as a subscription. You confirm each commitment with its cadence and next due date, whether you added it by hand or it came in from a connected bank, a statement or an AI import.
That matters for annual renewals. A system that infers subscriptions from history can’t flag a yearly charge until it has seen it twice — which means year two. Because the due date is set explicitly, Spendly warns you the first year, which is the year where knowing actually changes the outcome.
Find Subscriptions You Forgot About
If you’ve connected a bank or imported a statement, most of these will already be sitting in your transactions. To catch the rest, check the places that bill outside your card statement:
- Your bank and card statements for the last 12 months. Annual renewals only show up once, so a 3-month look-back will miss them.
- App store subscriptions — iOS under Settings → your name → Subscriptions; Android under Play Store → Payments and subscriptions. These are invisible on your statement as anything other than “Apple” or “Google”.
- Your email, searched for “receipt”, “renewal”, “your subscription” and “welcome to”.
- PayPal, which hosts recurring billing agreements that never appear as recognisable line items on your card.
Then enter what you find. Once it’s in Spendly, the annual $119 charge and the $4.99 app you forgot in 2024 both sit in the same list with the same annualised cost, and neither surprises you again.
Subscriptions vs. a Spreadsheet
You could track subscriptions in a spreadsheet, and plenty of people do. The differences that actually matter:
- Mixed billing cycles. A spreadsheet shows $119/year and $9.99/month as two unrelated numbers. Spendly normalises both so you can compare them and see one honest total.
- Renewal timing. A spreadsheet won’t tell you your antivirus renews next Tuesday. Spendly flags it seven days out, while cancelling is still free.
- Multi-currency. If you pay for one service in euros and another in dollars, a spreadsheet needs a hand-maintained conversion column. Spendly converts both into your base currency at daily rates.
- Connection to the rest of your money. A list in Google Sheets is disconnected from your budget. In Spendly, commitments feed your budgets, your reports and your cash flow forecast — one system instead of three.
Know Your True Recurring Costs
Before you can cut subscription spending, you need to know the real total. Spendly calculates your monthly and annual subscription costs, broken down by category. You might discover that your “just a few subscriptions” actually cost more than your grocery budget.
Make Informed Cancellation Decisions
Not all subscriptions are wasteful. The goal isn’t to cancel everything — it’s to keep the ones that provide value and cut the rest. Spendly gives you the data to make those decisions:
- Usage vs. cost — Is that premium plan worth it if you use the basic features?
- Category balance — Are you spending too much on entertainment and not enough on tools that save you time?
- Trend data — Has your subscription spending been growing month over month?
Subscriptions in Your Budget
Subscription tracking integrates with Spendly’s budget planning tools. Set a monthly limit for subscriptions as a category, and Spendly tracks your recurring charges against that limit automatically.
Combine this with your spending reports to see how subscriptions compare to your other expenses and where there’s room to optimize.
Multi-Currency Subscriptions
Pay for services in different currencies? Spendly’s multi-currency support handles subscriptions in any currency, converting them to your base currency for accurate totals and reporting.
Your Data Stays Private
Spendly analyzes your transaction data locally to detect subscriptions. Your financial data is yours — it’s used only to power your personal dashboard and is never sold to third parties, used for advertising, or shared with subscription companies. You’re in full control of what you track and what you remove.
Stop the Subscription Creep
Subscription spending tends to grow slowly — a new service here, an upgraded plan there. Spendly’s spending reports track this growth over time so you can catch the creep before it becomes a problem.
For a step-by-step guide to auditing your subscriptions, read our post on how to find and cancel forgotten subscriptions.