The Filipino Guide to Subscription Auditing: Cut the Fat, Keep the Value

A subscription audit isn't about canceling everything and living off free tiers. It's about knowing what you're paying for and actually deciding if it's worth it.

You want every line item to have a reason to be there.

Takes about an hour the first time. Maybe 15 minutes after that.

First: get the full picture

You can't cut what you can't see. Before making any decisions, build the list.

Check these four places:

• Bank statements from the last 3 months (look for recurring amounts, not one-time charges)
• GCash or Maya transaction history, same approach
• Your email inbox. Search "invoice", "receipt", "renewal notice", "billing". This one finds the stuff you forgot existed.
• App Store and Google Play both have a subscriptions section under your account settings

Don't skip the email search. That's where the forgotten trials hide. You'll find a ₱0.00 trial confirmation from 2023 that quietly converted to paid months ago.

Most people find 2 or 3 subscriptions they'd stopped thinking about just from this step.

Sort them honestly

Once you have the list, put each subscription into one of three buckets.

The Keep pile is easy: you use it regularly, it earns its place, and if it disappeared tomorrow you'd sign up again that same day without thinking twice.

Review is for anything you use sometimes but can't confidently justify the cost. Or things you haven't opened in a while but feel weird about canceling. This bucket needs more scrutiny before you decide.

Cut is for the ones you forgot about, haven't touched in 30+ days, or have a free alternative that does the same job.

The Review bucket is where most of the real work happens. Take your time with it.

The one question that actually works

For anything in Review, ask: did I use this in the last 30 days?

Not "do I intend to use it." Not "could I see myself using it." Whether you actually opened it in the last 30 days.

If the answer is no, check if there's a free alternative. Canva Free handles most of what Canva Pro does unless you're doing serious design work. Google Docs covers 90% of what Notion does for most people. Claude's free tier is legitimately useful and not everyone needs ChatGPT Plus.

If the free version covers what you actually need (not your aspirational use case, your real one), that's your answer right there.

Look for overlap before you cut

Sometimes the issue isn't individual subscriptions, it's duplicates.

Paying for iCloud storage and Google Drive? Pick one. Adobe Express and Canva Pro? That's redundant unless you have a specific reason for both. Multiple cloud storage services, two project management tools, a design app plus a "just for posters" app. These overlap constantly. The duplicate cost adds up to ₱500 to ₱1,500 a month you're paying twice for the same job.

Try to cancel before you actually cancel

This sounds weird, but before you fully cancel something you've been paying for a while, try going through the cancellation flow first. Especially for US-based services.

A lot of platforms will offer a discount or a few free months when you try to leave. It's a retention offer, not a guarantee, but it costs you five minutes to find out. Sometimes you end up keeping something you actually use at half the price.

Takes five minutes and sometimes saves you months of a discounted rate.

Set a reminder 3 months from now

Subscription drift is real. You do the audit, clean things up, and then slowly over the next few months a new trial creeps in, a colleague adds you to a team plan, something auto-renews that you meant to cancel.

Set a calendar reminder 3 months from today to run through Steps 1 to 3 again. Once you've done it once, the list already exists. You're just updating it, and it takes 15 minutes.

Common PH subscription costs for reference

Not a minimal stack. Just one where you know what's on it and why. Cut what you're not using. Keep what earns its place. And set that reminder so it doesn't quietly creep back.

Subwise tracks all of this automatically →