Streaming services, apps, gym memberships, cloud storage, insurance, software trials that quietly turned into paid plans: subscriptions are small enough to miss on a statement and add up to a lot over a year. Here are three ways to find every one of them.
1. Read the statement with a highlighter
Take the last three statements and mark every payment that appears in each of them with roughly the same amount. Monthly subscriptions show up in all three; yearly ones will not, so look back twelve months for the bigger ones (insurance, domain names, antivirus, memberships). It works, but it is slow and easy to get wrong when descriptions change slightly from month to month.
2. Let Excel find repeats
Put a few months of transactions in a sheet (Date in A, Description in B, Money out in C). Add a clean payee in D — the description without the reference numbers, for example with =TRIM(LEFT(B2,20)) — then count how often each payee appears:
E2: =COUNTIFS(D:D, D2)
Filter E for values of 3 or more over three months. Sort by payee and check that the amounts are similar. Multiply the monthly amount by 12 to see the yearly cost.
3. Use a converter that detects them
Drop a few months of statements on StatementEasy and open the Recurring tab. It finds payments to the same payee at a regular interval — weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly — with similar amounts, and shows for each one the typical amount, how often it is paid, the last date and when the next payment is expected. The Excel download includes a Recurring sheet with the same list.
The more months you give it, the better it finds yearly payments.
What to do with the list
- Cancel what you do not use. Start with the ones you forgot about.
- Check price increases. Compare the amount with what you signed up for.
- Look for duplicates. Two music services, two cloud storage plans, a family plan and a personal one.
- Switch to yearly billing for the ones you keep, if it is cheaper.
- Watch free trials. Note the date the first payment is due.
Common questions
Why does a subscription not appear?
It may be paid by card through another service (an app store, PayPal), so the statement shows that service instead. Check those accounts too.
Are direct debits and standing orders included?
Yes — rent, loans, insurance and utilities paid regularly are recurring payments too. They are often the biggest items on the list.