How this is calculated
yearly = monthly total × 12; invested value compounds the monthly total at your rate for the chosen years
Subscriptions are priced in the smallest believable unit — $9.99 a month, not $120 a year, and certainly not $1,200 a decade. This tool re-prices your whole stack in the honest units: yearly, over your chosen horizon, and as the invested alternative compounding at your chosen rate.
The business model works because of two asymmetries: signing up takes one tap while cancelling takes a phone tree, and each service is individually too cheap to audit. Surveys repeatedly find people underestimate their subscription total by roughly half, and 'zombie' subscriptions — paid but unused — sit in most stacks.
The fix isn't subscription asceticism; some subscriptions are the best money you spend. It's an annual audit with this number in view: list the stack, mark what you actually used last month, cancel the zombies, and redirect their exact amount to automatic savings. The chart above shows what the zombies alone were quietly costing.
Frequently asked questions
What does the average person spend on subscriptions?
US surveys land in the $60-90/month range for digital subscriptions alone — and participants typically guess about half their real figure before counting.
Which subscriptions should go first?
The unused ones — check last month's actual usage, not intentions. Then duplicates (two music services, three streaming apps mid-season). Rotating streaming services seasonally beats holding all of them year-round.
Annual plans are cheaper — worth it?
Only for services that survived at least one audit. The annual discount (usually 15-20%) is real, but it's also the industry's tool for making cancellation a once-a-year decision instead of a monthly one.