How to audit your subscriptions in one hour (and never be surprised again)

Most people have no idea how much they spend on subscriptions. Not a rough estimate — literally no idea. They guess low by 40-60%. This guide fixes that in about an hour, permanently.

Start with the interactive audit below. Check off the subscriptions you actually use and watch the cancellation savings appear in real time. Then read the step-by-step process to do this for your own accounts.

The simulator above uses realistic subscription prices. Your actual list will be different — probably longer and more expensive than you expect. The point is to make the exercise feel concrete before you start.

The four-phase audit process

Auditing subscriptions has a specific structure. Most people fail at it because they do phases out of order — they try to evaluate before they've discovered everything, or they try to automate before they've acted. Here's the right sequence:

How long this actually takes

The first audit takes about an hour. Every subsequent audit takes under 5 minutes because Spendbox maintains your subscription list automatically from forwarded receipts. Here's the breakdown:

The three questions in depth

The evaluation phase lives or dies on the three questions. Let's go deeper on each one:

1. Did I use this in the last 30 days?

This is the most important question and the most commonly cheated. People substitute "would I miss it" or "I might need it" for actual recent use. Don't. The question is binary: did you open the app, visit the site, or consume the content in the last 30 days? If not, it's a candidate to cut.

2. Would I sign up for this today at this price?

This resets the sunk-cost framing. The money you've already paid is gone. The only question is whether, knowing what you know about how you actually use this service, you would choose to start paying today. Most people answer "no" more often than they expect.

3. Is there a free tier or cheaper alternative?

Subscription software has a habit of billing you on the paid plan long after your needs would be fully covered by the free tier. Check: are you using the paid features? Could you switch to Notion Free, Figma Starter, GitHub Free? For storage, do you actually need the tier you're on, or did you upgrade years ago and never revisit?

Making the last phase automatic

The real goal isn't the one-time audit. It's building a system so you never have to do a big audit again. Every time a subscription renews, an email arrives. If that email automatically goes to Spendbox, your subscription list updates itself.

The filter setup in Gmail takes about three minutes:

1. Open Gmail Settings → Filters → Create a new filter
2. In the "Has the words" field: subject:(invoice OR receipt OR subscription OR "renewing")
3. Click "Create filter" → check "Forward it to" → enter your @spendbox.co address
4. Done. Every future receipt goes to Spendbox automatically.

After that, the 90-day re-audit is just a dashboard check. Spendbox shows you which subscriptions you haven't renewed (i.e., cancelled) and surfaces anything new that's appeared. The work is already done.