How to find every subscription you’re paying for
Most people can name six or seven. The real number is usually higher, not through carelessness, but because the line on your statement is written by whoever processed the payment, not by whoever you signed up with. Here are the four ways Submo finds them, and the checks you can run yourself before you decide.
- Gmail receiptsRead-only inbox scan
- Bank statementPDF, parsed in memory
- Manual entryAnything a scan can't see
- Bank connectionLive, via Plaid
Matching engine
Match the merchant · Infer the cadence · Merge duplicates
Every subscription you pay for
$154.90/mo
- Netflix$15.49
- Spotify Premium$11.99
- ChatGPT Plus$20.00
- Adobe CC$59.99
+ 3 more, with the next charge date on each
Four ways in, one list out. Whichever route you take, the result is the same: a single list with a real total, a renewal date on every row, and cancellation steps behind each one.
Why it’s harder than it sounds
The charge almost never carries the name
This is the whole problem. You are looking for Netflix and the statement says APPLE.COM/BILL. You are looking for a gym and it says SQ followed by a name you have never heard. Three blind spots account for most of what people miss:
- Anything bought inside an app is billed by Apple or Google, so the service's own name never reaches your statement.
- Annual charges appear once. Scroll back three months and a $139 renewal is simply not there.
- Small businesses bill through Square or Stripe, under a descriptor that's usually truncated halfway through.
On your statement
What it actually is
APPLE.COM/BILL
Any of your App Store subscriptions
GOOGLE *YOUTUBEPREMIUM
YouTube Premium
SQ *THE STRENGTH ROOM
A gym membership, billed via Square
AMZN Digital*2H4KL9
A Prime Video channel or Audible plan
What Submo does about it
Four ways to find them
All four work today. They stack, most people run a scan and then add the two or three things no scan could see.
Connect your inbox
Gmail integration
Almost every subscription emails you a receipt, which means the answer is usually already sitting in your inbox. Submo asks Google for read-only access, searches targeted receipt and recurring-billing queries, and reads the price and billing cycle from the matching messages.
- Read-only Gmail scope, revocable from your Google account whenever you like
- Searches two years of targeted receipt and recurring-billing results, including services outside the built-in catalog
- Reads the matched message body to distinguish the charged total from tax, discounts and refunds
- Keeps a missing amount as price unknown instead of silently calling it free
- Full message bodies are never stored; compact scan evidence expires within 90 days
Inbox scan
Read-only12 Jul
Your Spotify Premium receipt
Premium Individual: $11.99 billed monthly. Thanks for being a subscriber.
Extracted
netflix.com
Your Netflix bill
openai.com
Your ChatGPT Plus receipt
Only messages from a known subscription sender are opened. Everything else in your inbox stays unread.
Upload a PDF
Bank statement analyzer
Some charges never send an email (the gym, the parking app, the thing you signed up for in 2023). Export a PDF statement from your bank and Submo reads the transaction lines directly: it groups repeated merchant descriptors, measures the gaps between charges to work out the cadence, and throws out anything whose amount wanders.
- Merges truncated descriptors: NETFLIX.COM 4059 and NETFLIX.COM become one service
- Reads the cadence from the median gap between charges: weekly, monthly or yearly
- Drops merchants whose amount moves more than 20%: that's a shop, not a subscription
- Parsed on our own server, in memory, and the file is never stored
Statement analyzer
statement.pdfNETFLIX.COM 4059
12 May
15.49
NETFLIX COM
11 Jun
15.49
NETFLIX.COM 4059
12 Jul
15.49
Amount spread 0%
Monthly · NetflixSPAR MARKET 118
8.20 · 41.10 · 12.60
Amount spread 217%
Not recurringRead on our server, in memory. The PDF is discarded as soon as the scan finishes. Nothing is uploaded to a third party.
Type it in
Manual entry
No scan sees everything. A family plan someone else pays for, a membership taken in cash, a direct debit under a company name you'd never connect to the service. Pick from the catalog of popular services or add your own, and it behaves like any other subscription from that moment on.
- Browse popular services, or add anything at all by name
- Set the price, currency, cycle and next charge date yourself
- Mark it active, pending cancellation, or already cancelled
- Also how you correct anything a scan got slightly wrong
Manual entry
Add a subscriptionhead
Headspace
Wellness
HBO Max
Streaming
Price
Next charge
Billing cycle
Connect your bank
Direct bank integrations
A live connection means a new recurring charge shows up without you exporting anything, and a price rise surfaces the month it happens rather than the next time you think to check. Submo connects through Plaid, refreshes your accounts automatically, and never has the ability to move money.
- New recurring charges appear on their own, with no upload step
- Price rises are caught on the statement they first appear on
- Read-only by design: a connection to look, never to move money
- Available wherever Plaid supports your bank; statement upload covers the rest
Direct bank connection
Live, via Plaid- Charge landsA new recurring debit appears
- MatchedRecognised and added on its own
- RemindedYou hear about it before the next one
Bank not supported?
The statement analyzer finds the same charges from one PDF, and it works with banks no aggregator covers.
Use a statement insteadWhich one should you use?
If you only do one thing: upload a statement. It is the only source that sees the charges which never send an email, and those are reliably the ones people have forgotten.
| Method | Effort | What it catches | Where it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail scan | About a minute | Anything that emails you a receipt | Any Gmail account |
| Statement analyzer | Two or three minutes | Anything that touches your card or account | Any bank that exports a PDF |
| Manual entry | About 20 seconds each | Everything, including cash and shared plans | Everywhere |
| Bank connection | About a minute | Recurring charges, continuously | Any bank Plaid supports |
No account needed
Or find them yourself in ten minutes
Nothing here requires Submo. Five places hold almost every recurring charge you have, and working through them by hand is a perfectly good afternoon’s audit. Do it once a year and you’ll catch most of it.
Apple
Settings → your name → Subscriptions
Everything billed through the App Store, including subscriptions to apps you deleted long ago.
Google Play
play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions
Android and web purchases. Worth checking even if you've since moved to an iPhone.
PayPal
Settings → Payments → Automatic payments
The one people forget. A PayPal recurring payment doesn't look like a subscription on your bank statement.
Amazon
Account → Memberships & Subscriptions
Prime, Audible, Kindle Unlimited and any Prime Video channels bought inside Amazon.
Your bank
Search 12 months of statements, not one
Annual charges only appear once a year, and they're usually the largest ones you've forgotten.
And for your inbox: paste this into Gmail search
(receipt OR invoice OR subscription OR renewal OR "your plan") newer_than:1yIt surfaces a year of receipts in one search. Expect to scroll, this is the step Submo automates, and the reason it exists.
Once you’ve found them
A list is only useful if it does something. Here’s what happens to yours.
Frequently asked
Three sources cover nearly everything: your app-store subscription lists (Apple and Google Play), twelve months of bank or card statements, and the receipts in your email. Submo automates the last two and the manual list catches the rest, but you can work through all of them by hand in about ten minutes using the checklist on this page.
Yes. You can connect Gmail with revocable read-only access, upload a PDF statement that is parsed and discarded, or add subscriptions yourself. A connected Gmail inbox refreshes when you open the dashboard; the statement and manual options require no ongoing account connection.
Only messages returned by targeted receipt and recurring-billing searches. The Gmail scan runs after connection and on a throttled dashboard visit, checks up to two years, and reads each matched body in memory to understand the charged amount and cycle. Full message bodies are never stored. Compact scan results and evidence expire within 90 days; saved subscriptions remain in your account. Access is read-only and revocable at any time.
Because the name on the line is the payment processor's, not the service's. Anything billed through the App Store appears as APPLE.COM/BILL, Google Play purchases carry a GOOGLE * prefix, and small businesses show up under Square or Stripe. This is the single biggest reason people undercount what they pay for, and it's what the statement analyzer is built to unpick.
Yes, through Plaid, wherever Plaid supports your bank. The connection is read-only and revocable at any time. The statement analyzer covers the same charges too, and works in any country where your bank can export a PDF, including ones the account aggregators don't support.
See the real number
Connect Gmail, upload a statement, or type in what you know. Whichever you pick, you get one list, one honest total, and the steps to cancel anything on it.
Free to start · Cancel anytime