Adding up your subscriptions sounds like simple arithmetic, and it would be — if everything billed the same way. It doesn't. A few plans are monthly, one or two renew annually, and the odd app charges weekly. Add the raw numbers and your total is meaningless. The trick is to put every plan on the same footing first: convert each one to a monthly figure, then sum. Here's the method, plus a worked example you can copy.
A $99-a-year cloud plan and a $9.99-a-month music plan look similar on paper, but one costs about $8.25 a month and the other costs $9.99. A $4-a-week news app sounds tiny until you realize it's over $17 a month — more than most streaming services. If you add list prices as written, annual plans look huge and weekly plans look trivial, and your total is wrong in both directions. Normalizing to a monthly figure is what makes the comparison — and the sum — honest.
| Billing cycle | To get the monthly figure | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Use it as-is | $9.99 → $9.99 |
| Annual | price ÷ 12 | $99 → $8.25 |
| Weekly | price × 4.33 | $4 → $17.32 |
| Quarterly | price ÷ 3 | $30 → $10.00 |
| Every 6 months | price ÷ 6 | $60 → $10.00 |
The 4.33 for weekly plans is simply 52 weeks divided by 12 months — the average number of weeks in a month. Use it instead of 4 so weekly charges don't come out understated.
| Subscription | As billed | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming | $10.99 / month | $10.99 |
| Cloud storage | $99 / year | $8.25 |
| News app | $4 / week | $17.32 |
| Software tool | $7.99 / month | $7.99 |
| Fitness app | $120 / year | $10.00 |
| Monthly total | $54.55 | |
| Yearly total | × 12 | $654.60 |
Notice the weekly news app — the smallest-looking line as billed — is actually the largest monthly cost here. That inversion is exactly why the conversion matters, and exactly the kind of charge worth a second look.
Once you have one accurate number, the obvious next move is to shrink it. The fastest wins are the lines you converted and were surprised by: the weekly app that's really $17 a month, the annual plan you forgot renews, the premium tier you don't need. Mark anything you haven't used recently and decide on it before its next charge. Doing the math once is what turns a vague sense of “I have too many subscriptions” into a specific list you can act on.
Add your subscriptions to SubScan and it converts every billing cycle to a monthly and yearly figure automatically, then shows your true total and flags the ones you've forgotten. It runs entirely in your browser: no bank login, no account, nothing uploaded.
Open the free calculatorConvert each plan to a monthly figure first, then sum. Use a monthly price as-is, divide an annual price by 12, multiply a weekly price by 4.33, divide a quarterly price by 3, and divide a six-month price by 6. Once every line is per-month, add them for your monthly total and multiply by 12 for the yearly figure.
Because there are about 4.33 weeks in an average month — 52 weeks divided by 12. Using 4 understates weekly charges by roughly 8 percent, which adds up across a year. The 4.33 multiplier gives you a fairer monthly figure to compare against your other plans.
Both are useful. The monthly figure tells you what's leaving your account each cycle; the yearly figure — your monthly total times 12 — is usually the more motivating number, because small monthly charges hide how much a full year of them costs. Calculate the monthly total first, then multiply.
Enter each one into a tool that converts cycles for you. A calculator like SubScan takes the price and billing cycle for each subscription and returns the monthly and yearly totals automatically, so you don't have to do the conversions by hand or risk a math error.
Yes. SubScan never asks for a bank or card login and has no account. You enter your subscriptions and it converts every cycle to a monthly and yearly total locally, in your browser, with nothing uploaded to a server.
For informational purposes only. SubScan is a free, on-device tool and does not provide financial advice. Service names and figures are illustrative and used only to demonstrate the calculation; your own amounts and cycles will differ.