How much do subscriptions cost per year?

The monthly total times twelve, plus the annually billed charges everyone forgets. An $85/month stack with $300/year of annual charges is $1,320 a year — and most card statements reveal a stack two to three times larger than the owner's guess.

What do subscriptions cost over ten years?

Far more than 120 monthly payments, because each payment also forgoes compounding. A $1,320 annual stack invested at 6% as it went would approach $18,500 after a decade — and with typical 6% yearly price creep, the paid-out figure itself grows every year.

How often should I audit my subscriptions?

Once a year, from the card statement rather than memory — statements catch forgotten trials and silent price rises. The test for each line: did it earn its hours last year? Tools that save time stay; the rest were charging rent on inattention.

Subscription Cost Calculator — Your Stack Per Year & Per Decade

Monthly subscriptions, total

$/mo

Billed once a year, total

$/yr

Your take-home pay, yearly

Add what applies to you:

Advanced settings

Return if invested instead

%/yr

A decade of the stack

The restatement

Paid as it goes vs invested as it went

Ten years of the same money: the bill you pay quietly, against the balance it would have become. The gap is the framing’s trick. Hover to explore.

Three sizes of trim

The audit ritual

How we calculate

What is included

The annual bill is the monthly total × 12 plus the annually billed charges. Hours of life divide it by your effective hourly (take-home ÷ real yearly hours, using 46 working weeks). The decade column pays the bill year by year — growing it by the creep rate when that chip is on — and, in the comparison column, invests each year’s bill at your return assumption instead. The difference between the two is what the per-month framing is designed to keep out of view.

What is estimated or left out

The invested-instead column assumes the money would actually be invested, not re-spent — for most people the truth is somewhere between. Business-deductible subscriptions cost less net of tax than shown. And some subscriptions are the cheapest employees you’ll ever hire: the tool that saves an hour a week pays for itself forty times over. This page prices the stack; only you know which lines earn their keep.

The formula, in plain words

annual  = monthly × 12 + billed-yearly
hours   = annual ÷ (take-home ÷ (weekly hours × 46))
decade  = Σ annualₓ paid year by year   (×(1+creep)Ŷ if creep is on)
invested= Σ each year's bill compounding at your return to year 10
true decade cost = the invested figure — paid + growth forgone

Common questions

How much does the average American spend on subscriptions?: Surveys keep finding the same comedy: people guess $80–100 a month and the card statement says $200–280. The gap is the business model — charges small enough to forget, spread across enough services that no single one feels worth the cancel-flow. Sum your statement before trusting your guess.
Is it better to pay monthly or annually?: Annual billing is usually 15–20% cheaper per year of service — worth it precisely for the subscriptions that survived last January’s audit, and a trap for the ones you merely intend to use. Rule of thumb: monthly until a service has earned a year of loyalty, annual after.
Which subscriptions should I cut first?: Sort by dollars-per-actual-use, not by price. The $6 app you open daily is cheaper than the $12 service you opened twice last quarter. Duplicates go first (two music services, three storage plans), then anything you’d have to check whether you still have.

The Subscription Ledger