How to find all your subscriptions

Why one list is never enough

No single screen shows everything you pay for. A subscription is listed only by the company that bills it, so the one you started inside an iPhone app sits with Apple, the one you started on a website sits with your card, and the one you paid with PayPal sits there. Work through the six places below and write down what you find. It takes about twenty minutes, and most people turn up at least one thing they had forgotten.

1. Apple

1. Open Settings on your iPhone and tap your name at the top.
2. Tap Subscriptions. Everything Apple bills you for is listed, with its price and next renewal date.

This list only covers subscriptions bought through Apple, and only for the Apple Account you are signed in with. If you have ever used a second account, sign in to reportaproblem.apple.com with each one to see its purchases. Searching your email for receipt from Apple or invoice from Apple shows which account a charge belongs to. With Family Sharing you do not see other members' subscriptions here, and you cannot cancel them: each person has to check their own phone.

2. Google Play

On Android, open the Play Store, tap your profile, then Payments & subscriptions and Subscriptions. On a computer, the same list is at play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions. If something you expect is missing, it may belong to a different Google account, so switch accounts and look again. Deleting an app does not cancel its subscription, which is how forgotten ones tend to end up on this list.

3. PayPal

1. Sign in at paypal.com and open Settings.
2. Click Payments.
3. Select Subscriptions and saved businesses, which some accounts show as Automatic payments.

Every company allowed to charge your PayPal account is listed there. Stopping a payment in PayPal blocks future charges, but it does not necessarily close your account with that company, so cancel with the company as well.

4. Amazon

Sign in to Amazon and open Memberships & Subscriptions from the account menu. Prime is listed there, along with any channels added inside Prime Video and other recurring memberships. Channels are easy to forget because they were added with one click and are billed separately from Prime.

5. Your bank and card statements

This is the only place that catches everything billed to you directly, and the only way to find out which company is behind a charge you do not recognise.

• Go back a full twelve months. Annual subscriptions appear once a year and are the ones most often forgotten.
• Look for the same amount from the same name, month after month.
• Check every card and account you have, including an old card you rarely use.
• Do not skip small amounts. A charge of two or three euros a month is easy to miss and adds up over a year.
• Company names on statements are often shortened or differ from the brand. Searching the exact text of the line usually identifies it.

6. Your inbox

Search your email for receipt, invoice, renewal, subscription and free trial. Receipts catch what the statement hides, such as a trial that has not charged yet, or a service paid from a card that is no longer in your banking app.

What to do with the list

• For each subscription, note four things: the price, how often it bills, the next renewal date, and who bills it. The last one tells you where to cancel.
• Cancel what you no longer use. Our cancellation guides cover the common ones, including Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime.
• For anything on a free or discounted trial, cancel at least 24 hours before it ends.
• Keep the list. Prices change and new subscriptions creep in, so the list is only useful if it stays up to date.