Cost per use is the number that decides things
An annual total tells you the size of the problem. Cost per use tells you which line to act on, and the two often disagree. The biggest annual figure in a list is frequently the one earning its money, because the reason it is large is that it replaced something more expensive. The line worth cancelling is usually mid-sized and rarely opened.
The calculation is the monthly equivalent price divided by the number of times you used it last month. Count honestly and count sessions rather than intentions: a streaming service used for two films is two, not the eight evenings you thought about it. If a service is seasonal — a sports package, a tax program — one month is the wrong denominator, and the fair comparison is the annual price against the number of uses across a year.
The threshold field flags rows above whatever per-use figure you set. Three dollars is a reasonable place to start, on the logic that a service costing more per use than a coffee should have a specific reason to exist. It is a prompt, not a rule, and there is no research behind the number.
Monthly, yearly, and where the rounding goes
Yearly and monthly billing cannot be compared until one is converted, and converting in the wrong direction quietly loses money. This page anchors on the annual figure: a yearly price is stored as billed, a monthly price is multiplied by twelve, and every total is a sum of those annual integers in whole cents. The monthly column and the monthly total are the annual figure divided by twelve and rounded to the cent for display only. Nothing is ever computed from a rounded monthly number, so the annual column adds exactly to the annual total, while the monthly column can differ from the total by a cent or two per row.
That matters because an annual plan billed at a discount looks cheaper per month than it costs in the month you pay it. It is cheaper over the year, and it is also money committed a year ahead for a service you may stop using in March.
The five year figure, and its honest limits
The projection multiplies the annual total across five years with whatever price increase rate you enter, compounding each year. The default is zero, which is deliberate. Streaming and software prices have risen in recent years, sometimes sharply, but the increase varies enormously by service and there is no defensible single rate to apply on your behalf. Put in a rate if you want to see the shape of it, and read the result as a scenario rather than a forecast.
What the five year number does well is defeat the framing that got the subscription signed up in the first place. Nine dollars a month is designed to sound like nothing. The same commitment across five years is a figure you would think about before spending.
What this does not do
It does not track billing dates, tell you when the next charge lands, or find subscriptions you forgot about. If those are the questions, the subscription tracker takes billing days and produces next charge dates and a printable checklist. This page is for the other half of the decision: whether each one is worth what it costs, at the frequency you actually use it.
It also cannot see the thing that decides most cancellations. A subscription used twice a month at fifteen dollars costs seven fifty a use, and whether that is expensive depends entirely on what those two evenings are worth to you, which is not a number this page has any access to. The arithmetic clears away the excuse that you did not know; it does not make the call.
Questions people ask
How do I count uses for something always running in the background, like cloud storage?
Count the days it saved you something rather than sessions. Storage that silently backs up a phone is used every day, so 30 is the fair figure, and its cost per use will come out very low, which is correct. The uses field is optional precisely because it does not fit every service; leaving it blank keeps the row in the totals without producing a misleading per-use number.
Is annual billing always cheaper?
Per month, usually, because the discount is the incentive for the commitment. Over the actual period you use the service, not always, because an annual plan you stop using in month four cost twelve months. The rule that survives contact with reality is to pay monthly until a service has proved itself over several months, then switch to annual for the ones that have.
Why does the monthly column not add up to the monthly total?
Each monthly figure is an annual amount divided by twelve and rounded to the nearest cent for display, and the monthly total is the annual total divided by twelve and rounded once. Rounding each row separately and rounding the total once produce answers that can differ by a cent or two. The annual column, which is where the arithmetic actually happens, adds exactly.