Monthly or yearly: when the annual plan is worth it
An annual plan is usually cheaper per month, but only if you would have kept paying all year. Here is how to find the break-even point.
What your subscriptions really cost in a year
Small monthly prices add up to big yearly totals. Here is how to find the number that actually leaves your account.
A subscription is priced to feel small. $9.99 reads like the cost of a sandwich, and it is meant to. But a monthly price is a payment you have agreed to make twelve times a year, and hardly anyone stops at one.
The monthly price is the smallest number
The same subscription looks very different once you multiply it out to a year:
| Billed | Price | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | $2.99 | $155.48 |
| Monthly | $9.99 | $119.88 |
| Monthly | $15.49 | $185.88 |
| Quarterly | $24.99 | $99.96 |
| Yearly | $69.99 | $69.99 |
Weekly plans are the easiest to underestimate. A year has 52 weeks, not 48, so a weekly price is charged four more times than “four a month” suggests.
Now add them up
Few of us pay for just one thing. Take five fairly ordinary subscriptions:
- A video streaming service at $15.49 a month
- Music at $10.99 a month
- Extra cloud storage at $2.99 a month
- A news app at $9.99 a month
- A fitness app at $5.99 a month
That comes to $45.45 a month, which sounds manageable. Over a year it is $545.40, and that is before a single price rise.
Three questions worth asking once a year
Put the yearly figure next to each subscription, and ask:
- Did I use it in the last month? Not whether you might, but whether you did.
- Would I sign up again today, at this price? If not, the only reason you are still paying is that you already were.
- Is someone else at home paying for the same thing? Two separate plans for one service under one roof is more common than it sounds, and a family plan often costs less than both.
Cancelling one subscription you do not use is worth more than shaving a few cents off the ones you do.
Seeing the yearly number in 
Blips
Blips can show any subscription’s price as billed, or as a per-month or per-year estimate, so a weekly plan and a yearly one can be compared on the same terms. A few other things help:
- One total, in one currency. Subscriptions billed in different currencies are converted into a single total.
- Sorted by price. Group by billing cycle or category and sort by price, and the subscriptions worth a second look rise to the top.
- Only your share. If you split a subscription with someone, your totals count only your part of it.
The goal is not to cancel everything. It is to know the real number, and to keep paying only for what is worth it to you.