Subscription calculator

How the calculator adds things up

The calculator only adds up prices we have checked: every subscription in the catalog has a source and a check date, and a subscription without a check doesn’t make the list. It’s the same rule as on the rest of the site: a price that hasn’t been checked isn’t shown at all, not even with an asterisk. Where there’s no price or it depends on the buyer (courses, for example, are bought one at a time), you enter the amount yourself.

Annual amounts are converted to monthly, so subscriptions with different billing periods can be added up on one line. “Per month” therefore shows what your subscriptions cost on average per month; what’s charged in a given month can be different. The yearly line is the one worth remembering: monthly amounts look small, the yearly total tends to surprise.

Promo prices for the first months are shown on their own line, and the main total is based on the price that will come back after the promotion. Otherwise the calculator would show a tempting number instead of what you’ll pay next year.

Sales tax and currency in the US

The US has no VAT. Providers list their prices before sales tax, and whether tax is added at checkout — and how much — depends on your state and sometimes your city. The calculator shows the prices as the providers list them, so your actual charge can be a few percent higher. Each service’s page says next to the price how it’s listed.

The calculator works in dollars. Every price is shown in the currency the provider lists it in. Items in another currency are shown below the total on their own line, in their own currency, so you can see what the total is made of. When you pay in a foreign currency, the actual dollar amount is set by your bank’s exchange rate and fees, and the same item can cost a different number of dollars from month to month without the price changing. The total is good enough for comparing, but it’s not an exact preview of your card statement.

What’s saved and where

Without an account, your choices stay only in your browser: the list isn’t sent to any server and disappears if you clear your browser data. With an account, the list is also saved there and comes back when you sign in again. The same list appears in the “My subscriptions” block on the home page — it’s one and the same list.

Which subscription on your list is the most expensive

Not the one with the highest price, but the one you don’t use: you pay for it out of habit, and the price per view or sign-in is infinite. So before you add things up, mark which services you’ve opened at all in the last month — the rest are the first candidates to cancel. The second candidate is two services for the same need (two music services, two cloud storage plans): you rarely need both. The third is the service you use most on a monthly plan — that’s the one where it’s worth checking whether an annual plan pays off.

Cheaper alternatives below the calculator

Below the total, cheaper services in the same category are shown. Only confirmed prices of paid plans count as candidates, and only in the same currency — the calculator doesn’t suggest a plan whose price we haven’t seen, and doesn’t compare dollars with euros. An alternative doesn’t mean “the same thing, cheaper”: catalog, languages and features differ, so before you switch it’s worth opening both services’ pages.

What the calculator doesn’t do

It doesn’t track your card statement or guess what you’ve signed up for — the total is exactly as accurate as your list. It doesn’t know your personal discounts or carrier and internet bundles where a subscription is already included in another price. And it doesn’t judge whether a service is worth the money — that’s what the service pages are for; here it’s just arithmetic.