How to Do a Subscription Audit in 15 Minutes (And Save Money This Month)

A subscription audit sounds like something that requires a spreadsheet, an afternoon, and a CPA. It doesn’t. Done efficiently, it’s a 15-minute exercise that most people only need to do once or twice a year — and the savings it uncovers are almost always worth the time.
Here’s how to do it from start to finish.

Minutes 1–3: List Your Bank and Card Statements

Pull up your bank account and credit card statements for the last two months. You’re looking for recurring charges — anything that appears at a consistent interval with a consistent amount. Most banking apps let you filter by merchant or category, which can speed this step up significantly.

As you find them, write down the name of the service, the monthly cost, and the billing date. Don’t evaluate anything yet — just collect the full list. Judgment comes later.

Minutes 4–6: Check Your Email for Receipts

Open your email and search for “receipt,” “billing,” “subscription,” and “payment.” Scan the results for any services that didn’t show up in your bank statements — particularly anything paid through a different method or billed annually.

Add these to your list. If a service appears here but you haven’t seen it on a recent statement, it may be billed annually — worth checking what the next renewal date is.

Minutes 7–9: Review App Store Subscriptions

On your phone, check both the Apple App Store and Google Play subscriptions. These are managed separately from your bank and are easy to miss in a standard review. Add anything new to your list.

Also check PayPal or any other payment platforms you use for any recurring billing agreements.

Minutes 10–13: Evaluate Each Subscription

Now comes the decision-making phase. For each item on your list, ask three questions:

Have I used this in the last 30 days?
Would I pay for this again today if I were signing up fresh?
Is there another service I’m already paying for that covers this need?

Services that score well on all three are worth keeping. Services that score poorly on all three should be canceled immediately. The ones in the middle deserve a brief reflection — is there a meaningful reason you’re holding onto them, or are you just avoiding the task of canceling?

Minutes 14–15: Cancel What You Don’t Need

For most subscription services, cancellation involves logging into your account, finding the billing or subscription section, and clicking through a cancellation flow. Some companies make this harder than it should be — adding extra steps, showing you “pause” options, or routing you through customer service.

This is where Subdelete becomes genuinely useful. Rather than navigating to each service individually and working through their individual cancellation flows, you can cancel multiple subscriptions directly from one place. What might otherwise take 30–40 minutes of clicking around gets compressed into a few quick actions.

What to Do After the Audit

Once you’ve cleared out the subscriptions that weren’t earning their place, set a reminder to do this again in three to six months. Your subscription landscape will shift over time — new ones get added, habits change, better alternatives emerge.

The goal isn’t to live with zero subscriptions. It’s to make sure every recurring charge on your account is something you’ve actively chosen to keep, not something you’re paying for by default.

Fifteen minutes. Twice a year. That’s genuinely all it takes to stay on top of your subscriptions and make sure your money is going where you intend it to go.