A subscription tracker for the charges you forgot about.

Why subscriptions slip through

A subscription is designed to be forgotten. You sign up, the first month is cheap or free, and a year later you are paying for something you opened twice. No single charge is a crisis, which is exactly why they survive.

The numbers add up faster than people expect. Ten subscriptions averaging 8 a month is 80 a month, which is 960 a year. As a labelled example, if half of those are things you barely use, cancelling them frees roughly 480 a year without changing anything you enjoy.

Seeing the yearly cost

Vaulta lists every bill and subscription with what it costs each month and each year. The yearly figure is the one that changes behaviour. Nobody blinks at 12.99 a month; 155.88 a year makes you ask whether you use it.

You can add subscriptions by hand on the Free plan. Recurring payment detection, the radar, is part of Pro and Premium. It reads the transactions you have recorded, spots charges that repeat, and suggests adding them. It works from your own data, so the more complete your records, the better it does.

A 15 minute audit

You do not need an app to start. The Journal has a step-by-step guide to auditing your subscriptions in 15 minutes. The short version:

1. Open your last two bank or card statements.
2. Highlight anything that repeats.
3. Put each one on a list with its monthly cost.
4. For each, ask three questions: did I use it this month, would I buy it again today, is there a cheaper plan?
5. Cancel what fails two of three.

A tracker then keeps the list alive so you do not need to do the audit again next year.

Trials and renewals

Free trials are where most unwanted subscriptions begin. When you start one, add it to Vaulta with the renewal date and set a reminder for two days before. Reminders are scheduled on your device. If you decide to keep it, nothing changes. If not, you cancel before the first charge.

For Apple subscriptions, cancelling is done in your Apple Account on your iPhone: Settings, your name, Subscriptions. Vaulta does not cancel anything for you, and it cannot. It only keeps the list honest.

What it will not catch

Charges paid in cash, through a family member's account or through a service that does not repeat on a fixed pattern will not be detected. If you share a streaming plan and pay your friend back each month, add it by hand. And the radar is a suggestion, not a verdict: you decide what goes on the list.

How this fits the rest of your money

Your subscriptions are part of your fixed costs. Once they are listed, they are subtracted from safe to spend automatically, and they appear in the cash flow forecast. See also bill reminders.

Making cancelling easier

Decide in advance what counts as a reason to keep something: used at least twice a month, or would be missed. Anything else goes. Cancel the week you notice, not next month. If you are unsure, cancel and resubscribe later; most services let you. Put a yearly reminder in your calendar to repeat the audit, because new subscriptions creep in just as the old ones go.