Free trials: how to stop paying for things you meant to cancel

A free trial is a bet. The service bets that on the day the trial ends, you'll be too busy to notice, or you'll have forgotten which day it was. It is a good bet, which is why nearly every trial now asks for a card up front. None of this makes trials bad. It just means the trial comes with a small job: knowing the end date and hearing about it in time.

Why trials convert without you noticing

• The date is in the future. A 7-day trial ends next week; a 30-day trial ends next month. By then the sign-up is a distant memory.
• Nothing tells you. A few services email a day before the first charge. Most don't have to, and don't.
• The first charge looks like the others. "SPOTIFY" on a statement is unremarkable. You only notice when you add up the month.
• The cancel path is longer than the sign-up path. Signing up was one tap. Cancelling means finding the right settings page.

The one habit: record the end date when you start

The day you start a trial, write down two things: the day it ends, and what it will cost after. That's it. Put it in your calendar, your notes, or a subscription tracker that treats a trial as a subscription with a first charge on the end date.

Then set a reminder for two days before the end date. Two days is enough to decide and act, and close enough that you'll still remember what the service was for.

If the trial is a week long, one day before is fine. If it's a month, add a second reminder a week before: by week three you'll know whether you're using the thing.

Cancel early where the trial survives it

On many services, cancelling during the trial keeps your access until the trial's last day. App Store subscriptions work this way: cancel on day two and you still have the full trial. Many services on the web do the same, and say so on the cancel page.

If that's the case, cancel the moment you decide you're not keeping it. You lose nothing, and there's no date to remember. Where a service ends access the moment you cancel, wait for the reminder instead.

Make the trial easy to end

A few small things make trials safer:

• Sign up through the App Store or Google Play when you can. Both show every trial in one place, with its end date, and cancelling is two taps.
• Use a virtual or single-use card number if your bank offers one. You can turn it off, and the charge simply fails.
• Keep a note of how you signed up. A trial started through the App Store has to be cancelled there, not on the website. Trying the wrong place is how people "cancel" and still get charged. The guides to cancelling on an iPhone and on Android show where those store subscriptions live.

If you've already been charged

It happens to everyone. Three things to try, quickly:

1. Cancel now, so it doesn't happen again next month. Our cancel guides have the steps for the common services.
2. Ask for a refund. Apple has a refund request page for App Store purchases, Google Play has one too, and many services refund a first accidental charge if you ask within a few days and haven't used the service. Be plain: "I meant to cancel the trial and missed the date. Could you refund this charge?"
3. If the charge keeps appearing after you cancelled, contact the service with the cancellation confirmation, and if that goes nowhere, your card issuer can dispute it.

What good trial tracking looks like

The trial is a subscription with a date. A tracker that understands that will:

• Store the end date as the first charge, and the price that starts then.
• Remind you before the end date, not after the charge.
• Show the trial on a calendar next to everything else, so you can see what else lands that week.
• Let you mark it cancelled so the record stays, and the reminder stops.

Renewbird does this. When you add a subscription you can mark it as a free trial, give it the end date, and it gets its own reminder before the trial turns into money. It never asks for your bank or your card number. Free to start.