Choosing a subscription tracker that doesn't need your bank login

Subscription apps come in two kinds. One kind asks for your bank login, reads your transactions, and works out your subscriptions from the charges it sees. The other kind asks you what you pay for and takes it from there. Neither is wrong. They suit different people, and the difference is worth understanding before you type a bank password into anything.

What bank linking does

Apps that connect to your bank use a data provider (Plaid is the best known) to sign in to your bank with your credentials or through your bank's own consent screen. From then on they download your transactions, usually once a day, and run them through rules that spot repeating charges. The upside is obvious: you don't have to type anything, and the app finds subscriptions you forgot.

What it costs you

• Access to everything. The app sees every transaction, not just subscriptions: salary, rent, the pharmacy, the bar. Most are careful with it. You still have to trust that, and trust their data provider, and trust whoever buys the company later.
• It's a record, not a reminder. Bank data arrives after the charge. The app can tell you Netflix charged you yesterday. It can't tell you it will tomorrow, unless it guesses from last month.
• Trials are invisible. A free trial produces no transaction until it becomes a charge, which is exactly when you wanted to know about it. (More on that in free trial reminders.)
• The stores hide things. Subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play show up as one line from Apple or Google. The app can't see what's inside.
• It doesn't work everywhere. Bank connections cover some countries and banks well and others not at all, and they break when banks change their login flows.
• Multiple currencies confuse it. A euro charge on a dollar card shows as a slightly different amount every month, which looks like a new charge each time.

When it's still the right choice

If you have dozens of subscriptions, lose track of them often, and are comfortable with the access, a bank-linking app will find things a manual list misses. Some also negotiate bills or cancel on your behalf, which is a real service. If you want that, apps like Rocket Money and others in that category are built for it. We compared the two approaches side by side in Renewbird vs Rocket Money.

What a tracker without bank access needs

If you'd rather keep the bank out of it, the tracker has to make up for the typing. These are the eight things that decide whether it does:

1. Fast adding. A catalog of common services, so adding Netflix is a tap, not a form. Typing your own for anything unusual.
2. Four facts per subscription, no more. Name, price, how often, next date. If it asks for the card, the plan name and the login, you'll stop keeping it up to date.
3. Totals in your currency. If you pay for some things in dollars and some in pounds, the app should convert them at today's rates and say so when it can't.
4. Reminders you control. How many days before, at what hour, in your time zone. A reminder at 3 a.m. is not a reminder.
5. Trials as first-class. A trial has an end date and a price that starts then. The app should treat that as the first charge and remind you before it.
6. A calendar. The question is rarely "what do I pay for"; it's "what lands this week".
7. Pause and cancel as states. Marking something cancelled, with the date access ends, keeps the record and stops the reminders. Deleting loses both.
8. Export and delete. Your list should leave with you as a spreadsheet, and the account should be deletable from inside the app.

What it shouldn't need

A subscription tracker doesn't need your bank login, your card number, your card's security code, or your expiry date. If one asks, ask why. The only payment detail that's ever useful is which card a subscription is on, and even that is optional.

Where Renewbird sits

Renewbird is the second kind. You pick what you pay for from a catalog or type your own, give each a price and a next date, and it keeps the totals in your currency, the calendar and the reminders, with trials handled as trials. It stores no card numbers, has no bank connection, and lets you export everything or delete your account from Settings. It's free to start, and the five-step method for building the list the first time takes about an hour.