People lose track. The charges don't stop.

Nobody signs up for 22 subscriptions. You sign up for one, 22 times, over several years, and each one is small enough to ignore.

To see what that looks like added up, we wrote an ordinary set of subscriptions out as a single receipt. The list is made up and the prices are sample U.S. prices, but nothing on it is unusual.

The receipt

No single line is alarming. The most expensive one is $20. The total is still more than three thousand dollars a year.

Three lines worth a second look

A list like this usually hides the same three kinds of charge.

The trial that ended. HBO Max, $19.99. The free trial ended in March and the charge started the next day. Trials are designed to convert quietly, and the first payment rarely comes with a reminder.

The one you stopped opening. Duolingo, $7.99, last opened in January. The service is fine. You just aren't using it, and it has no way of knowing that it should stop charging you.

The duplicate. Spotify at $12.99 and Apple Music at $11.99. Two services doing the same job, usually because one came with a deal and the other was already there.

Drop HBO Max, Duolingo and the cheaper of the two music services, and that's $39.97 a month, or $479.64 a year, back from three lines nobody would miss.

Why it happens

Subscriptions are easy to lose track of for plain reasons.

• They renew on different days. There's never one moment where you see them all together.
• They're spread across payment methods. Some are on a card, some go through the App Store, one is on an old PayPal account.
• Each one is small. $7.99 doesn't feel like a decision, so you never make one.
• Stopping takes effort and continuing takes none. Doing nothing always means paying again.

None of this is carelessness. It's how recurring billing works.

Write your own receipt

You can do this in about fifteen minutes.

1. List what you remember. Write down every subscription you can name, with its price.
2. Check your statements. Go through the last two months of each card and account, and add what you missed. Go back a full year to catch annual plans.
3. Check your app store subscriptions. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions.
4. Add it up per month, then multiply by twelve. The yearly number is the one that changes minds.
5. Mark each line. Using it, not using it, or doubled up with something else.

Then cancel what you marked. Most people find at least one line they'd forgotten.

Keeping it written down

A receipt like this goes out of date the first time a price changes or a trial converts. That's what Subwise is for. You add each subscription once, by hand or from a screenshot on iPhone, and it shows what's left to pay this month and reminds you before each renewal, so the next forgotten trial gets a notification instead of a charge.

Subwise doesn't connect to your bank and it can't cancel anything for you. It keeps the list in front of you, and what stays on it is your call.