What your subscriptions actually cost per year

Subscriptions are sold in the unit that makes them feel small. A few dollars a month is below the threshold at which anybody does arithmetic, which is exactly why that is the unit on the page.

The fix is one multiplication, done consistently.

Put everything on the same scale

Multiply each price by how many times a year you are charged:

• Weekly: × 52
• Fortnightly: × 26
• Monthly: × 12
• Quarterly: × 4
• Yearly: × 1

That is the whole method. The reason it is worth doing deliberately is that most people only annualise the monthly ones, because those are the ones that feel like subscriptions.

A worked example

Eight hypothetical lines. The prices are invented for the arithmetic — they are not any real service's prices, and real prices vary by country and change over time. Use your own statement.

• Video service, $12.00 monthly: 12.00 × 12 = $144.00
• Music service, $9.00 monthly: 9.00 × 12 = $108.00
• Cloud storage, $2.50 monthly: 2.50 × 12 = $30.00
• Gym, $38.00 monthly: 38.00 × 12 = $456.00
• Newspaper, $4.50 weekly: 4.50 × 52 = $234.00
• Magazine, $7.00 fortnightly: 7.00 × 26 = $182.00
• Filter delivery, $28.00 quarterly: 28.00 × 4 = $112.00
• Association membership, $95.00 yearly: 95.00 × 1 = $95.00

Annual total: 144 + 108 + 30 + 456 + 234 + 182 + 112 + 95 = $1,361.00.

Divide back for a monthly figure that is comparable to a payslip: 1,361.00 ÷ 12 = $113.42 a month.

The part people miss

Add up only the monthly lines, the way most people do it in their head: 12.00 + 9.00 + 2.50 + 38.00 = $61.50 a month, or 61.50 × 12 = $738.00 a year.

The four non-monthly lines add 234 + 182 + 112 + 95 = $623.00. Check: 738 + 623 = $1,361.

So 623 ÷ 1,361 = 45.8% of the annual total sits in lines that never appear in a monthly mental tally. Nearly half the spend is invisible to the usual method, not because it is hidden but because it is billed on a different clock.

Small and frequent beats large and rare

Look at the newspaper. At $4.50 it is the second-cheapest line on the list by sticker price, and the third-largest by annual cost:

• Newspaper: $234.00 a year, or 234.00 ÷ 12 = $19.50 a month.
• Video service: $144.00 a year, or $12.00 a month.

The $4.50 line costs more than the $12.00 line, by 234 − 144 = $90.00 a year. Nothing about the two price tags suggests that. Frequency does all the work, and frequency is the thing the price tag omits.

Shares, so you can see the shape

Divide each annual figure by the total:

• Gym: 456 ÷ 1,361 = 33.5%
• Newspaper: 234 ÷ 1,361 = 17.2%
• Magazine: 182 ÷ 1,361 = 13.4%
• Video service: 144 ÷ 1,361 = 10.6%

Those four are 33.5 + 17.2 + 13.4 + 10.6 = 74.7% of the total between them. The remaining four lines share the rest. That is usually the useful discovery: the list is long, and two or three lines are most of the money.

One billing trap worth knowing

Some things bill every four weeks rather than monthly. Four weeks is not a month — there are 52 ÷ 4 = 13 four-week periods in a year, not 12. A price of $20.00 every four weeks costs 20.00 × 13 = $260.00 a year, not 20.00 × 12 = $240.00. If you are annualising by hand, count the charges rather than assuming twelve. If you are entering it into a tool that offers a fortnightly cycle, enter half the amount fortnightly: 10.00 × 26 = $260.00, which is the same figure.

The decision is still yours

An annual figure is information, not a verdict. A cheap thing you use every day can be better value than an expensive thing you use twice a year, and no calculator knows which of yours is which.

The free Subscription Audit tool converts every line you paste to both a monthly and an annual figure, totals them, and shows each line's share. You can flag a line as rarely or never used and it is totalled separately. It has no bank connection and never will — it does arithmetic on the lines you typed, so check them against a real statement.