How to cancel subscriptions on your iPhone

Subscriptions on an iPhone come in two kinds: the ones billed through Apple, which you can cancel in Settings in under a minute, and the ones billed directly by the company, which you have to cancel with them. Most people have both, which is why “I thought I cancelled that” happens so often.

Cancelling subscriptions billed through Apple

If you signed up inside an app using your Apple account, Apple handles the billing, and cancellation lives in one place:

1. Open Settings and tap your name at the top.
2. Tap Subscriptions.
3. You’ll see every active subscription billed through Apple, with its price and renewal date. Tap one.
4. Tap Cancel Subscription and confirm.

The same list is in the App Store app, behind your profile picture, under Subscriptions.

Two things worth knowing:

• You keep access until the period ends. Cancelling today doesn’t cut you off today; it stops the next charge. There’s rarely a reason to wait.
• Deleting the app does not cancel anything. The subscription keeps renewing whether or not the app is on your phone. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the App Store.

Cancelling subscriptions billed directly

Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime and most newspapers usually bill you directly, so they never appear in Apple’s list. We keep per-service cancel guides for the popular ones, each covering every billing path. For each one, sign in to your account on the company’s website and look for a billing, membership or subscription page. The cancel button is often easier to find in a desktop browser than in the app, and some services don’t offer it in the app at all.

If you’re not sure how a service bills you, check where the charge appears: Apple charges show as one combined Apple bill, direct charges show the company’s own name on your statement or receipt email.

Finding the ones you’ve forgotten

Cancelling is the easy half. The hard half is knowing what to cancel, because the list above only shows what’s billed through Apple, and your bank statement mixes subscriptions in with everything else. A few places to look:

• Apple’s Subscriptions list, including the expired section at the bottom, which jogs the memory.
• Email search for “receipt”, “renewal”, “your invoice” and “trial”.
• Last three months of card statements, looking for the same name appearing monthly.

Or keep the list somewhere on purpose. SubHelm holds every subscription in one place, whoever bills it, shows the real monthly total, and reminds you before each charge, while there’s still time to cancel. If you’re mid-audit, our guide to what subscriptions really cost per year is the natural next step.

Before you cancel: trials

If the subscription is still in a free trial, cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends; Apple charges for the paid period at renewal time, and direct billers vary. Cancelling a trial usually keeps it running until its end date, so there’s no reason to squeeze the last day out of it. More on that in how to stop paying for free trials you forgot.