How much do you spend on subscriptions a year? Find out in three steps

Streaming video, music, cloud storage, AI tools, productivity apps… Subscriptions usually don’t cost much on their own — anywhere from a few dollars to a few dozen a month — and they’re charged automatically, so few people ever sit down and add up what they pay in a year. When you do, the total is often more than you’d expect.

These three steps take about half an hour, and at the end you’ll know exactly where you stand.

Step 1: Find all your subscriptions

Subscriptions are scattered across different places, so go through each one:

• App Store: On your Mac, open the App Store, click your name in the bottom-left corner, then click Account Settings. Next to Subscriptions, click Manage. On iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then tap Subscriptions. Every subscription you’ve bought through Apple is listed here, including ones that have expired.
• Bank and credit card statements: Look through the last 12 months of statements for charges that show up every month, quarter, or year. Yearly subscriptions are charged only once a year, so they’re the easiest to forget.
• Payment services: PayPal, Alipay, WeChat Pay, and similar services each keep a list of automatic payments or auto-renewals, recording the memberships and tools they pay for on your behalf.
• Email: Search for keywords like “renewal,” “subscription,” “receipt,” and “invoice” to turn up plenty of billing notices.

Don’t forget any free trials you’re in the middle of: when the trial ends, most of them turn into paid subscriptions automatically.

Step 2: Work out the yearly cost

Subscriptions bill on different cycles, so before you compare them, convert each one to a yearly cost:

For subscriptions you pay in a foreign currency, convert the cost into the currency you normally use, based on the exchange rate. Add up all the yearly costs, and you have your total subscription spending for the year; divide that by 12 to get your average per month.

Step 3: Decide what stays and what goes

Go down the list and ask yourself these questions about each one:

• Have I used it in the past month? If you haven’t opened a service in a long time, cancel it for now. You can always subscribe again when you need it.
• Is anything a duplicate? If you have two music services or three cloud storage plans, you probably only need one. It’s also surprisingly common to pay for the same service twice, with different accounts or through different channels, such as the App Store and the service’s own website.
• Would paying yearly save money? For services you’re sure you’ll keep using, a yearly plan is usually a bit cheaper than paying monthly. If you’re not sure, stick with monthly for now.
• Can I share it with family? Many services offer family plans, and splitting one among several people costs less than everyone subscribing separately.
• When does the trial end? Decide whether to keep a service before its trial is over, and if you don’t want to pay, cancel ahead of time.

Make it a habit with Mili

Doing the math once isn’t hard. The hard part is staying on top of it. That’s exactly what Mili is for:

• Mili knows 245 popular services, so you can type a name to fill in the icon and typical price, and enter your whole list in minutes. See Quick start.
• Different billing cycles and currencies are converted automatically, and the Annual Statement shows exactly how much you spent in a year and which kinds of services the money went to. See Annual Statement.
• Mili reminds you before every charge, while there’s still time to cancel. See Charge reminders.
• Subscription Review flags trials that are about to end and duplicate subscriptions. See Subscription Review.

Mili doesn’t require an account, and your data stays on your devices and in your own iCloud.