What your subscriptions really cost per year (the maths most of us skip)

Nobody buys a subscription for $180. They buy it for $14.99 a month, which is a different purchase, emotionally, even though it's the same money. The yearly number is the honest one, and it takes a minute to work out. This post walks through the maths, the traps, and a quick way to decide what stays.

The conversions

Everything into one unit, a year:

• Monthly: price × 12. $14.99 a month is $179.88 a year.
• Weekly: price × 52. A $2.99 weekly app is $155.48 a year, which is more than most monthly plans.
• Every three months: price × 4.
• Every six months: price × 2.
• Yearly: the price as it is. This is the only one that already tells the truth.

If you'd rather see a monthly figure, divide the yearly one by 12. Weekly charges come out at about 4.33 weeks a month, which is why "$3 a week" is really $13 a month.

A worked example

A fairly ordinary list:

• Netflix, $17.99 a month
• Spotify, $11.99 a month
• iCloud+, $2.99 a month
• YouTube Premium, $13.99 a month
• A gym, $45 a month
• ChatGPT Plus, $20 a month
• Amazon Prime, $139 a year
• A domain, $15 a year
• A news subscription, $4 a week
• A language app, $7.99 a month

Monthly items add up to $119.95 a month, or $1,439.40 a year. Add Prime and the domain ($154) and the weekly news ($208) and the year is $1,801.40. The monthly figure, "$150 a month, roughly", sounds manageable. Eighteen hundred dollars is a flight, a laptop, or a month's rent in a lot of places. To run the same sum on your own list, the subscription cost calculator does the conversions for you.

Why people get it wrong

Surveys keep finding the same gap between what people think they spend on subscriptions and what they actually spend. A widely cited 2022 study by C+R Research asked people to guess their monthly subscription spend and then checked it: the average guess was $86, and the real figure was $219, about two and a half times higher. The exact numbers vary by study and country; the direction never does.

The reasons are familiar:

• Different charge dates. No single bill shows the total.
• Yearly charges. They happen once, surprise you, and are forgotten by the next month.
• Price rises. The $9.99 you signed up for is $15.49 now. Almost every big service has raised prices more than once in the last few years.
• Trials that converted. You never decided to pay; it just started.
• Other currencies. A tool billed in dollars or euros is a different number on your statement each month, so it never gets a fixed place in your head.

The yearly-plan trap, both ways

Yearly plans are usually cheaper per month, often by a sixth or more. They are also the easiest way to pay for something you stopped using nine months ago. Two rules:

1. Pay yearly only for things you've already used monthly for a few months. The discount is real, but only if you'd have kept paying anyway.
2. Put a reminder a week before a yearly renewal, not three days. A $120 decision deserves a quiet evening, not a morning rush.

A quick way to decide what to keep

Once you have the yearly figure for each subscription, add one more number: roughly how many times you used it last month. Divide the monthly price by that. It gives a cost per use, and it's brutally clarifying.

• A $17.99 streaming service you open every evening costs about 60 cents a night. Keep it.
• A $12 app you opened twice is $6 an open. Pause it, or cancel.
• A $45 gym you went to once is a $45 visit. You already know what to do.

For the ones that go, our cancel guides have the exact steps for Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, iCloud+ and the rest.

For things with seasons, a sports package, a ski-planning app, pause rather than cancel, where the service allows it, and let the reminder bring the question back when the season does.

Keep the number in view

The yearly total only helps if you see it more than once. A list that shows the total every time you open it, in one currency, with each renewal date and a reminder before it, turns the yearly figure from a one-off shock into a number you quietly manage. Renewbird does exactly that: your monthly and yearly total in your currency, every charge on a calendar, and a reminder before each one. It's free to start, and it never asks for your bank.