— Budgeting
Subscription Cost Calculator
Add up recurring subscriptions across billing cycles. List monthly, quarterly, or yearly services to see true monthly and annual cost, daily cost, 10-year spend, investment opportunity cost, and which subscriptions cost the most.
Total monthly cost
$2,460
- Annual cost
- $29,526
- Cost per day
- $80.89
- 10-year total spent
- $389,170
- Invested instead
- $566,001
- Rarely-used drain
- $1,500
Try: No price creep, Aggressive 8% creep, Conservative 8% return
— Your subscription register
| Service | Cycle | Price | Monthly | Annual | Usage | Cost/use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gym | Monthly | $1,500 | $1,500 | $18,000 | Rarely | $1,500 |
| Netflix | Monthly | $649 | $649 | $7,788 | Weekly | $149.77 |
| Google One | Monthly | $130 | $130 | $1,560 | — | — |
| Spotify | Monthly | $119 | $119 | $1,428 | Daily | $3.97 |
| Prime (1/2) | Yearly | $1,499 | $62.46 | $750 | — | — |
| Total | $2,460.46 | $29,526 |
— What cancelling the rarely-used ones saves
| Subscription | Cost/use | Monthly saved | 10-yr invested |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gym | $1,500 | $1,500 | $345,058 |
— Where the money goes
Download— How it works
Each subscription is converted to a monthly-equivalent (quarterly ÷ 3, yearly ÷ 12), divided by how many people share it, and summed. Annual = monthly × 12. Cost-per-use = your monthly cost ÷ uses per month. The “invested instead” figure is the future value of that monthly amount compounded at your assumed return.
The real cost of “just a few dollars a month”
The whole business model of subscriptions relies on each one feeling too small to cancel. Individually they are — but they don’t arrive individually. This calculator normalises every service to a common monthly figure, regardless of whether it bills monthly, quarterly or annually, and adds them up. The number is almost always larger than people guess, because the annual and quarterly charges hide between the monthly ones. Seeing the true monthly total, and the annual figure beside it, is usually the moment the pruning starts.
Worked example — a common Indian stack: Netflix ₹649/mo, Spotify ₹119/mo, Prime ₹1,499/yr (= ₹125/mo, split 2 = ₹62), Google One ₹130/mo, Gym ₹1,500/mo. True monthly total ≈ ₹2,460 — about ₹29,500 a year, far more than the monthly ones alone suggest.
What that money could be doing instead
A subscription isn’t just this month’s charge — it’s a standing order that runs for years. The calculator projects the total you’ll spend over your chosen horizon, optionally with a realistic annual price rise, and sets it against the opportunity cost: what the same monthly amount would grow to if invested at your assumed return. The gap is stark, because the subscription money vanishes while the invested money compounds. This isn’t an argument against all subscriptions — it’s a way to judge which ones are worth their true long-run price.
Cost-per-use and cancel candidates
The sharpest cut isn’t the most expensive subscription — it’s the one you barely touch. Rate how often you use each service (daily, weekly or rarely) and the calculator works out its cost-per-use, then surfaces the rarely-used ones as cancel candidates: a gym at a high monthly fee used twice a month costs more per visit than a drop-in class, and a streaming service opened once a quarter is dead weight. The what-if table shows exactly what each cancellation saves a month — and what that saving becomes if invested instead. A useful discipline is to cancel everything you’re unsure about; the ones you genuinely miss take thirty seconds to resubscribe, and the rest you’ll never think about again.
Shared plans and categories
Two refinements make the total honest. If you pay for a plan several of you use — a family streaming account, a shared cloud plan — set how many people share it and the calculator counts only your share, so a ₹1,499 plan split four ways costs you about ₹375, not ₹1,499. And tagging each subscription with a category — streaming, music, software, fitness, cloud and the rest — turns on a composition view that shows where the money really concentrates. Most people discover one category quietly dominates, which is often the easiest place to consolidate: three overlapping streaming services rarely justify themselves once they’re side by side.
— Reader questions
How do I add up subscriptions billed on different cycles?
Convert each to a monthly equivalent: divide an annual price by 12 and a quarterly price by 3, then add them all together. This calculator does it automatically — just set each service’s billing cycle and it normalises everything to one monthly figure.
What is the “invested instead” figure?
It’s the opportunity cost of your subscriptions: the future value of the same monthly amount if you invested it at your assumed annual return instead of spending it. Over years it’s typically several times the cash you’d have spent, because invested money compounds while subscription money is gone.
How much does the average person spend on subscriptions?
Studies repeatedly find people underestimate their subscription spend by a wide margin — often guessing a quarter of the real figure — because charges are small, spread across cycles, and easy to forget. Listing them in one place, as here, is usually a surprise.
Should I add a price increase?
It makes the long-run figure more realistic. Subscription prices tend to rise over time, so adding even a few percent a year shows a truer picture of what a service will cost you over a decade than today’s headline price does.
Which subscriptions should I cancel first?
Start with the cancel candidates — the services you rate as rarely used. The calculator ranks them by cost-per-use and shows the monthly saving (and its invested value) for each, so the easiest wins are obvious. Anything you’re unsure about is usually worth cancelling, since resubscribing is trivial.
What is cost-per-use?
It’s your monthly cost for a subscription divided by how many times you use it in a month. A ₹1,500 gym visited twice a month is ₹750 a visit; a ₹119 music app used daily is about ₹4 a day. Rating each service’s usage lets the calculator compute this and flag the ones that aren’t earning their keep.
How do I handle a shared or family subscription?
Set how many people share the plan and the calculator counts only your share of the cost. A family plan you split three ways costs you a third of the headline price, which is the figure that belongs in your personal subscription total.