The year-end subscription review: what to check before January

A full subscription audit is worth doing once a year. The end of the year is a good moment for a shorter, targeted version, because several kinds of charge cluster around it. The general method is in how to do a subscription audit; this page covers what is specific to December and January.

1. Annual plans renewing in the next three months

Plans bought in last year’s holiday sales come round again now, at the regular price. Search your email for receipts from November and December of last year, and your card statements for single large charges from the same months. Each one is a renewal you can decide on before it happens instead of after.

2. Trials started over the holidays

New devices, gift cards and holiday promotions start trials that end in January, when attention is elsewhere. List every trial with its start date and length. Our guide to holiday free trials covers the date arithmetic and the 24-hour rule that catches App Store subscribers.

3. Gift subscriptions that may convert

Gifts given or received can turn into paid subscriptions, on the recipient’s card or the giver’s. See do gift subscriptions auto-renew for what to check on each side.

4. Price increases announced for January

Many services announce new prices in advance by email. Search for "price" and "update to your plan" in the last three months. An announced increase is the best moment to reconsider a service, because it forces the comparison you would otherwise never make.

5. Set next year’s number

Add up every subscription as a yearly figure and write the total down. Research by C+R in 2022 found that people underestimate their monthly subscription spending by $133 on average, which is why the written total is the most useful single output of the review. Our subscription budget guide turns it into a plan.

What to do with what you find

Plan January sign-ups as part of the same pass: a gym or fitness app started on the strength of a resolution is best begun monthly, with a review date — see New Year’s resolution subscriptions.

For each item, decide: keep, downgrade, pause or cancel. Pausing and downgrading are underused; many services offer an ad tier, a lighter plan or a pause that costs less than cancelling and returning. For anything you cancel, keep the confirmation and check that no further charge appears, as described in charged after cancelling.

Making next year’s review quicker

Most of the work in a review is finding the subscriptions. Once they are listed with their renewal dates, next year’s review is a ten-minute read of a list. SubTracker keeps that list, with yearly totals and renewal dates. SubTracker does not connect to your bank — you add each subscription once yourself, which takes about ten minutes and is the reason nobody else sees your transactions.