How to find every subscription you are actually paying for
Seven places a recurring charge can come from, in the order to check them, and what to do about a bill from a company whose account you can no longer open.
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Ines Villaverde
Contributing writer, recurring charges
Ten years as a consumer-rights caseworker, first in Madrid and then in London, where the single largest category of complaint she handled was an automatic renewal the customer said they had never agreed to and the company said they had.
Reads terms of service in Spanish and English, which turns out to matter more than it sounds — the same subscription is frequently priced, discounted and renewed on different terms in the two markets, and the English page is not always the stricter one.
Covers Meal kits, Health apps, Streaming · At this desk since 20 March 2026
Ines writes the pieces where the headline price is not the problem. Meal kits are the clearest case — the box price is fine, the shipping is not, and the introductory discount runs for exactly long enough that you stop watching. Health and fitness apps are the second clearest, because the annual plan is usually the only plan anyone should buy and it is rarely the one presented first.
She takes the view that a subscription you forgot about is a subscription that was designed to be forgotten about, and that the design is the story.
Filed by Ines
4 pieces
What a meal kit costs per portion once the discount ends
Five meal kits normalised to the same six-portion week, with shipping added wherever the company will tell you what it is. Every figure read on one day.
What calorie counting apps cost a year, and which free tiers survive real use
PlateLens Premium is now $34.99 a year, which moves the cheapest paid tier in the category $5 below Lose It!. Here is the whole ledger, with the monthly traps and the free-tier caps.
What fitness subscriptions cost a year, and what stops working when you stop paying
Seven fitness subscriptions priced per year, from $0.00 to $199.99. On six of them, cancelling costs you software. On one it costs you the hardware.