About this calculator
Audit your subscriptions to find unused services costing you money. Calculate usage value, identify subscription waste, and get personalized.
How to use
Enter your values in the fields above and click Calculate to see your results. Click Clear to reset all fields.
What it is and when to use it
This calculator checks a single subscription against how much you actually use it, rather than just looking at the sticker price. Streaming services, apps, gyms, and software subscriptions are easy to keep paying for out of habit long after the value has dropped off. By entering the monthly cost alongside how many times (or hours) you use the service and roughly what each use is worth to you, the calculator turns a vague "should I cancel this?" feeling into a specific dollar comparison.
Run it whenever you're doing a monthly or annual subscription review, right after a free trial converts to paid, or any time a recurring charge catches your eye on a statement. Because it only asks about one subscription at a time, the practical way to use it is to run each subscription through in turn — Netflix, then your gym, then a software tool — and compare the verdicts side by side.
The formula, explained
The calculator computes a handful of related numbers from four inputs: monthly cost, times used per month, hours used per month (optional), and value per use to you.
Annual cost = Monthly cost × 12
Cost per use = Monthly cost ÷ Times used
Perceived value = Times used × Value per use
Net value = Perceived value − Monthly cost
Value per use is the subjective part: it's what a single use would be worth to you if you paid for it separately — what you'd pay per movie night, per workout, or per article read. The calculator then compares the perceived value you're getting each month against what you're actually paying, and labels the result:
- Free — nothing to audit if the monthly cost is $0.
- Likely waste — unused if you recorded zero uses this month.
- Low value — consider canceling if net value is negative (you're paying more than the value you're getting).
- Worth keeping if net value is zero or positive.
Worked example
Using the calculator's own default example — a $15.99/month Netflix subscription used 8 times a month for 10 hours total, with each use worth about $3.00 to you:
- Annual cost: $15.99 × 12 = $191.88.
- Cost per use: $15.99 ÷ 8 = $2.00.
- Cost per hour: $15.99 ÷ 10 = $1.60.
- Perceived value: 8 × $3.00 = $24.00.
- Net value: $24.00 − $15.99 = +$8.01.
Because net value is positive, the calculator returns a Worth keeping verdict: you're getting about $8.01 more in value than the subscription costs each month, based on these inputs. If usage dropped to 3 times a month instead, perceived value would fall to $9.00 against a $15.99 cost — a net value of −$6.99, flipping the verdict to Low value — consider canceling, with an annual savings estimate of $191.88 if canceled.
Common mistakes and how to interpret the result
- Overestimating "value per use": it's tempting to inflate this number to justify keeping a subscription. Try anchoring it to a real alternative — what a single movie rental, a drop-in gym class, or a one-off article purchase would cost.
- Only counting active use: a subscription you use passively (background music, cloud backup) may still be worth it even with a low "times used" count — consider using the hours-based cost-per-hour figure instead for that kind of service.
- Ignoring annual versus monthly billing: if you're actually billed annually, divide by 12 first so the monthly cost field reflects a true monthly rate before comparing.
- Treating one month as the full picture: usage often swings seasonally (a gym in January versus July); rerun the audit after a typical month, not your best or worst one.