You can check recurring payments in a few minutes by looking in three places: your bank or credit card statements, your phone’s app subscription settings, and any payment platforms like PayPal where you’ve authorized automatic billing. Most people are surprised to find charges they forgot about, so a quick audit across all three can save real money.
Check Your Bank and Credit Card Statements
The fastest way to get a complete picture of every recurring payment is to pull up your bank and credit card statements from the past 60 to 90 days. Most subscriptions bill monthly, but some charge quarterly or annually, so looking back a few months catches charges that don’t appear every cycle.
Log into your bank’s website or app and look for a transaction search or filter option. Many banks let you sort by merchant name or amount, which makes it easy to spot the same charge appearing month after month. Look for round-dollar amounts or charges from names you don’t immediately recognize. Streaming services, cloud storage, fitness apps, software tools, meal kits, and membership boxes are common culprits. Some banks and credit card issuers now have a built-in “recurring charges” or “subscriptions” view that automatically flags these for you, so check whether your provider offers that feature before scrolling through individual transactions.
Do this for every card and account you use. If you’ve switched credit cards over the years, old subscriptions may still be hitting a card you rarely check.
View Subscriptions on iPhone
Any app you subscribed to through the App Store bills through Apple, so you can see all of those in one place. Open the Settings app, tap your name at the top, then tap Subscriptions. You’ll see a list of every active and expired subscription tied to your Apple ID, along with the renewal date and price for each one. Tap any subscription to see its details or cancel it.
This only covers subscriptions purchased through Apple’s billing system. If you signed up for a service through its website and just downloaded the app afterward, that subscription won’t appear here. You’ll need to check the service’s own account settings or your bank statement to find it.
View Subscriptions on Android
Open the Google Play Store app, tap your profile icon in the top right, then tap Payments & subscriptions, followed by Subscriptions. This shows every active recurring charge processed through Google Play, including the next billing date and amount. Like Apple, this list only includes subscriptions you purchased through the Play Store, not ones billed directly by a company’s website.
Check PayPal Automatic Payments
If you’ve ever used PayPal to subscribe to a service or set up recurring billing with a merchant, those agreements live in your PayPal settings. On the website, go to Settings, click Payments, then select “Subscriptions and saved businesses” or “Automatic Payments.” You’ll see every merchant you’ve authorized to charge your PayPal account on a recurring basis. Click any merchant to view the details, change your payment method, or cancel the agreement entirely.
In the PayPal app, tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines), then tap Subscriptions or Linked Businesses. Tap any merchant to review or update the arrangement. If you want to stop a merchant from billing through PayPal, tap Manage, then select “Stop Paying with PayPal” and confirm.
Canceling through PayPal removes the billing agreement on PayPal’s side, but it doesn’t always cancel your account with the merchant. You may still need to log into the service directly to close your account and avoid being sent to collections for unpaid invoices.
Check Individual Service Accounts
Some recurring payments won’t show up in any of the places above because you signed up directly on a company’s website using a credit card. Streaming platforms, software subscriptions, news sites, and gym memberships often work this way. For these, you’ll need to log into each service and look for a billing, subscription, or account settings page.
If you can’t remember every service you’ve signed up for, your email inbox is a useful detective tool. Search for terms like “subscription,” “receipt,” “renewal,” “billing,” or “payment confirmed.” Most services send a confirmation email when you first subscribe and again each time they charge you, so this search often surfaces subscriptions you’ve completely forgotten about.
Should You Use a Subscription Tracking App?
Several apps promise to find and organize all your recurring payments in one place. They typically work by connecting to your bank account through a financial data aggregator or by scanning your email for receipts. This can be genuinely convenient, but it comes with trade-offs worth understanding.
These apps need broad permissions to function. Depending on the app, you may be granting access to your transaction history, email content, or other personal data. Third-party apps can collect, share, and sell your information if you don’t carefully manage what you allow them to access. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recommends denying access to any data or functions you don’t want an app to have, even if the app requests it. Before installing a subscription tracker, read its privacy policy to understand what data it collects and whether it shares or sells that data to third parties.
If you do use one, treat it as a supplement to checking your statements directly, not a replacement. No app catches every charge, especially annual ones or payments made through less common methods.
How Often to Review
A monthly check takes just a few minutes if you make it a habit. Pick a day each month, such as the day after your credit card statement closes, and scan for charges you no longer need. Once a year, do a deeper review that covers quarterly and annual subscriptions by looking back through a full 12 months of statements. Free trials are especially worth tracking since many convert to paid subscriptions automatically after 7 or 30 days. Setting a calendar reminder before a trial expires is the simplest way to avoid an unwanted charge.