Track Subscriptions and Bills: Find and Cancel Unused Ones

To track subscriptions properly, you gather every recurring charge — streaming, music, cloud storage, in-app subscriptions, the gym, plus your regular bills — into one list and review it on a schedule. The goal is simple: stop paying for things you don’t use, and know exactly how much of each month is already spoken for before you spend a cent.

The short version: scan the last three months of bank and card statements, check the subscription lists in the App Store and Google Play, multiply each monthly charge by 12, and decide what stays. For bills that swing with the seasons, budget the 12-month average rather than last month’s number. Here’s each step in detail.

How forgotten subscriptions drain your budget

No single subscription looks big on its own: one streaming service, a music plan, extra cloud storage because your phone filled up, an in-app subscription for a photo editor, a gym membership started in January and abandoned by March. The problem isn’t the amount — it’s that the charge is invisible. An auto-renewing payment never asks you to decide again; it slips past as one small line on a statement.

Richard Thaler’s 1985 paper on mental accounting in Marketing Science describes how people sort money into separate mental “accounts” and judge spending within them. Seen through that lens, small recurring charges easily land in a “too small to matter” box. Look at the same charges as a yearly total, though, and the decision often changes, as the table below shows. Households add one more layer: two partners paying separately for the same music service is an easy duplicate to miss.

How to find all your subscriptions: a 5-step audit

1. Scan the last three months of statements. Open every bank account and credit card and mark charges that repeat around the same date for the same amount. Search any merchant name you don’t recognize. Annual memberships won’t show up in a three-month window, so skim the past 12 months for those.
2. Check your app store subscriptions. In-app subscriptions often appear on a statement only as “Apple” or “Google”, so you need the store to see which app each charge belongs to. On iPhone: Settings > [your name] > Subscriptions. On Android: open Google Play > tap your profile icon > Payments & subscriptions > Subscriptions. Menu names can vary slightly by version.
3. Don’t forget other channels. Services billed through your phone carrier, charges on digital wallets and payment accounts, emails with subjects like “your renewal” or “membership receipt”, and shared services paid from a partner’s card all belong on the list.
4. Put everything in one list. For each item, note the service, amount, billing cycle (monthly or annual), renewal date, which card it hits and who uses it.
5. Decide on each one. Keep it (you use it regularly), downgrade it (a cheaper tier, a family plan or an ad-supported version), rotate it (one streaming service at a time, switching every few months) or cancel it. Cancel unused subscriptions first: anything you haven’t opened in the past month is a strong candidate.

A subscription audit is one of the lowest-effort, longest-lasting ways to save money: a subscription cancelled once keeps saving you money every month after.

Turn monthly costs into yearly costs

The fastest way to see what a subscription really costs is to multiply the monthly price by 12. Eleven dollars a month sounds like pocket change; $132 a year is a different conversation. The prices below are examples only — actual prices vary by service, plan and country.

In this example, cancelling streaming service B and the photo app and merging the two music accounts into a family plan (say $18 a month) saves $11 + $8 + $6 = $25 a month, or $300 a year. At two visits a month, the gym costs $22.50 per visit, so a pay-per-class option or working out at home might make more sense.

Free trials and the auto-renewal trap

Free trials aren’t bad in themselves; they’re a sensible way to test a service before paying. The problem is that most trials roll into a paid subscription automatically, and the end date is easy to forget.

• Note the end date when you start. Set a reminder in your phone’s calendar one or two days before the trial ends.
• Read the cancellation terms. With some services you keep access until the trial ends even after cancelling; with others, access stops immediately. The store’s subscription screen usually shows the renewal date.
• Watch annual renewals. Charges that hit once a year are the easiest to forget, so put the renewal date on your list.
• Read price-increase emails. Services usually announce a new price before renewing — the natural moment to ask whether it’s still worth it.
• Review saved cards. A card entered for a trial can be the source of a forgotten charge months later.

Bill tracker basics: average your bills and plan for the seasons

Electricity, gas, water, internet and phone bills aren’t like subscriptions: some are fixed, others swing a lot with the seasons. For a useful bill tracker, one month’s figure is misleading. Panicking over January’s heating bill and budgeting low off July’s are two sides of the same mistake.

• Fixed bills: Internet and mobile plans usually cost the same every month. Note when your contract or promotional rate ends; that’s the time to ask for a better deal.
• Variable bills: Heating costs peak in winter, and electricity can peak in summer if you run air conditioning. Add up the last 12 months, divide by 12 and budget that average.
• Smooth the difference: In months when the bill comes in under the average, set the difference aside to cover the expensive months. Some utilities also offer budget billing, which spreads the yearly cost into equal payments — ask yours.

For example, if your gas bills totalled $1,440 over 12 months, the monthly average is $120. When July’s bill is $30, set aside $90; when January’s arrives at $260, the $140 above average comes out of that buffer. Autopay protects you from late fees but makes the bill invisible, so still glance at the amount once a month.

Manage monthly bills by making recurring expenses visible

Subscriptions and bills, together with rent or mortgage, insurance and loan payments, make up your household’s recurring expenses: money that’s committed at the start of the month before you’ve bought a thing. Knowing that total tells you how much is genuinely free to spend.

1. List every recurring payment: rent or mortgage, utilities, subscriptions, insurance, loan and card installments.
2. Total it and compare it with take-home pay. For example, if $2,750 of a $5,000 take-home income goes to fixed costs, that’s 55%, and groceries, transport and everything else come out of the remaining $2,250.
3. Map the payment calendar. Write down which day each payment leaves your account; a cluster of charges just before payday can squeeze your balance. Some providers let you change the due date, so it’s worth asking.
4. Renegotiate once a year. Compare internet, phone and insurance offers. Lowering a fixed cost once saves money automatically every month after.

If you want a framework for how much of your income fixed costs should take, the 50/30/20 budget rule is a good starting point, and our guide on how to make a family budget walks through the whole household plan.

Common mistakes when you track subscriptions

• Checking only one card: Subscriptions can be spread across several cards, including your partner’s.
• Skipping app store subscriptions: A single “Apple” or “Google” line on your statement can cover several different apps.
• Thinking deleting the app cancels it: Removing an app from your phone doesn’t stop billing. Cancel from the store’s subscriptions screen, or on the service’s own website if you signed up there.
• Budgeting bills off a single month: Seasonal bills planned without an average will blow a hole in the budget in winter or summer.
• Auditing once and stopping: New subscriptions creep in quietly. A quick review every three to six months is enough.

How to track subscriptions and bills in Hano

After the first audit, the real work is keeping the list current, which is exactly what a subscription tracker is for. Hano’s recurring (monthly) transactions are built for this, and they’re included in the free plan.

• Enter it once, and it’s added every month: When adding a transaction, set Frequency to Recurring (monthly). Rent, your internet bill or a music subscription is then added to your budget automatically each month. Use Pick end date to set a last month (for example, when your contract ends) or leave it at No end date.
• Stop it when you cancel: When you cancel a subscription, open the entry and tap delete; Hano asks what you want to do with the recurring item. Choose Stop recurring and past entries stay while new months stop being added.
• See what’s coming: The Upcoming filter on the Transactions screen lists recurring payments and installments that haven’t come due yet. For the installment side, see our guide to tracking installment payments.
• See fixed costs on one card: In the Insights section of the home screen, the Fixed expenses card totals your Rent, Bills and Subscriptions entries plus installments for the period, while the daily average covers your variable spending on its own.
• Add it by typing (Pro): Type “netflix 15.99 every month” to the assistant and it’s saved straight away as a recurring transaction. Type just “netflix 15.99” and Hano logs it, notices it looks like a subscription and asks, “Shall I add it automatically every month?” Tap Yes, every month to confirm.

Two honest notes. First, Hano doesn’t send bill reminders and doesn’t connect to your bank; for due dates, use your bank’s or provider’s alerts, autopay or your phone’s calendar. Hano’s job is to keep these payments visible in your budget every month. Second, Hano Pro and Max are subscriptions too: they’re cancelled with one tap from the App Store or Google Play subscriptions screen, so put Hano on your audit list as well. Download Hano for free and enter your recurring payments once; if you’d rather add them by typing, Pro starts with a 7-day free trial, no card required.