See what streaming, audiobooks, cloud storage and AI really cost you per week, month and year. Free software under GPL-3.0.
Download SubTrack
By Rune Slettebakken
Ten here, a hundred and ninety-nine there. One by one, subscriptions seem small, but together they quickly become one of the biggest fixed costs in a household. With SubTrack I have made a simple app for Linux and Windows that shows what your subscriptions really cost per week, per month and per year. It is free software, with no ads and no tracking, and everything you enter stays on your own computer.
How much am I actually paying?
It started with a bank statement. I was scrolling through a month of payments and found streaming services I hardly ever used, an audiobook app I had forgotten about and a newspaper I paid for every week. Some are charged weekly, most monthly and a few once a year. That makes it hard to see the whole picture. Is 1,290 kroner a year more or less than 129 kroner a month? And what does 49 kroner a week add up to over a whole year?
I wanted a small program that converts everything to the same scale and shows the total. I made the first draft with help from an AI assistant, and then polished it into something I actually want to use myself. The result is SubTrack 1.0. It has ten built-in categories, support for your own categories, a colourful chart, seven languages and seven currencies. It runs as a regular desktop program on both Linux and Windows.
Everything on one screen
When you open the app, you land straight on the Overview. At the top are three large cards with the combined cost per week, per month and per year. With eleven ordinary subscriptions in my example, that comes to 328 kroner a week, 1,421 kroner a month and a full 17,057 kroner a year. That number made me stop and think.
Below the cards is the list of all your subscriptions. For each one you can see what you are actually billed, and what that equals per week, month and year. You can filter the list by category and sort it by name, by category or by cost, from most to least expensive or the other way round. Every row has buttons to edit and delete.
Add a subscription in seconds
On the Add Subscription tab you type in a name, pick a category, enter the amount and choose whether it is paid per week, per month or per year. You can also add a note, such as which plan you have or when it renews. As you type, the panel on the right shows what the amount equals in the other billing cycles. That way you can see straight away that Dropbox at 1,199 kroner a year works out at roughly 100 kroner a month.
To change something later, click Edit in the list. The same form opens with the subscription already filled in. Has the newspaper put its price up, or have you switched from monthly to yearly billing? Change it, press Update, and all the totals are recalculated.
How SubTrack does the maths
I wanted the calculations to be simple and predictable. A year counts as 52 weeks and 12 months, and every amount is converted using these fixed rules:
| You pay | Per week | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per week (W) | W | W × 52 / 12 | W × 52 |
| Per month (M) | M × 12 / 52 | M | M × 12 |
| Per year (Y) | Y / 52 | Y / 12 | Y |
This means the figures always agree with each other: the yearly amount is exactly 52 times the weekly amount and 12 times the monthly amount. Amounts are shown in the number format of the language you have chosen.
Where does the money go?
Knowing the total is one thing, but seeing where the money goes is at least as useful. Next to the list, SubTrack shows a donut chart where each category has its own colour. Below the chart is a subtotal for each category, with the amount per month and per year, the number of subscriptions and the share of the total. In my case, streaming and AI took the biggest slices.
Categories, including your own
SubTrack comes with ten built-in categories that cover what most people pay for:
Built-in categories. TV Streaming, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Newspapers, Cloud Storage, Email, AI, VPN, Digital Security and Other.
Your own categories. If something is missing, you create your own category with a name and a colour. I have made Gaming and Fitness, for example. If you delete one of your own categories, its subscriptions are moved to Other, so nothing disappears.
Seven languages and seven currencies
Subscriptions are not just a Norwegian thing, so the app is built for several languages. You can choose between English, Norwegian, German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese in the menu at the top right. Everything is translated, including the categories, and numbers are formatted the way that is usual for the language you pick. The change happens instantly, with no restart needed.
Next to the language menu you choose a currency: kr, €, $, £, ¥, CHF and ₹. The app does not convert between currencies. Your choice only decides which symbol is shown next to the amounts, which suits anyone who pays in a single currency.
Your data stays with you
SubTrack needs no account and no internet connection. Everything you enter is saved automatically in a small file on your own computer, and it is remembered the next time you open the app. That includes your chosen language, currency, filter and sort order. On Linux the file is ~/.config/SubTrack/subtrack-data.json, and on Windows it is %APPDATA%\SubTrack\subtrack-data.json. It is plain JSON, so it is easy to back up or move to another computer. The About tab shows exactly where the file is.
Download
SubTrack 1.0.0 is available for Linux and Windows (64-bit). Choose the file that suits you:
| File | System | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SubTrack-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage | Linux | A single file that runs on most distributions. Make it executable (chmod +x) and double-click it. About 103 MB. |
| SubTrack-Setup-1.0.0-x64.exe | Windows | A regular installer with shortcuts in the Start menu and on the desktop. You can choose the installation folder. About 75 MB. |
| SubTrack-Portable-1.0.0-x64.exe | Windows | A portable version that does not need to be installed. It can run from a USB stick. About 75 MB. |
| SubTrack-1.0.0-source.zip | All | The complete source code, for anyone who wants to see how the app is made or build it themselves. About 2 MB. |
Note for Windows users: The program is not code-signed with a commercial certificate. The first time you start it, Windows SmartScreen may therefore show the warning “Windows protected your PC”. Click More info and then Run anyway. This applies to most small free programs, and it does not mean there is anything wrong with the file.
Free software
SubTrack is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later), as published by the Free Software Foundation. This means you are free to use, study, share and modify the program, as long as you pass the same freedoms on. There are no ads, no in-app purchases and no data collection. A program that keeps track of your finances should not be sending information about you out onto the internet.
Finally
SubTrack started as a small tool to get an overview of my own subscriptions. Just entering them made me cancel two services I was not using. Perhaps the same will happen to you. Download the app, spend ten minutes entering what you pay for, and see what the number turns out to be. If you have feedback, ideas for new features or have found a bug, I would love to hear from you.
Good luck taming your subscriptions!