Cheaper Alternatives to the Subscriptions You Already Pay For
Switching services is the least likely thing you will actually do. The two changes that save real money need no change in what you get at all.
Advice about cutting subscription costs almost always starts in the wrong place. Cancel Netflix, it says, and watch free things instead. Drop Adobe and learn GIMP. Leave the gym and do press-ups in your living room.
This advice is technically correct and almost nobody follows it, because it asks you to give up something you like in exchange for money you will not notice arriving. The switch that works is the one where you keep what you value and stop paying for the part you do not.
Here is the order that actually produces savings, from most likely to work to least.
1. The same thing, billed differently
This is the largest saving available for zero change, and most people never check.
Almost every subscription service offers annual billing at a discount of fifteen to twenty percent against paying monthly. The product is identical. The apps are identical. You simply pay once instead of twelve times.
On a £15 a month service, annual billing typically brings it to around £12.50 equivalent — thirty pounds a year, for changing a dropdown.
Two honest cautions. Only do this for services you are confident you will keep for a full year, because the money is gone regardless. And set a calendar reminder for eleven months out, because annual plans renew silently and you will not see the charge coming.
The other version of this is simply asking. Companies with retention departments — cable, internet, mobile, newspapers, some gyms — hold discounted rates for people who call and say they are thinking of leaving. The advertised price is frequently not the real price. It costs one phone call to find out.
2. A lower tier you did not know existed
The second-largest saving, also with minimal change.
Most services have a tier below the one you are on, and most people are on the default because it was preselected at signup. Some examples of the pattern:
- Streaming with adverts. Usually less than half the ad-free price. If you watch two hours a week, the adverts cost you a few minutes. If you watch three hours a night, they will drive you mad. Be honest about which you are.
- Storage tiers. People pay for 2TB while using 60GB. Check your actual usage before renewing. Dropping to the smallest paid tier is often a two-thirds saving.
- Gym tiers. The premium tier usually buys guest passes, massage chairs and multi-location access. If you go to one gym alone, you are paying for none of it.
- Software you use one app from. Full creative suites cost several times a single application. If you only open one, buy one.
- Family plans. Per person, these are frequently a third of the individual price. If two people in your household pay separately for the same service, that is a straightforward duplication.
3. Two services doing one job
This one needs no pricing research at all, just a list.
Look through your subscriptions and group them by what they are for rather than what they are called. The duplicates are usually obvious once written down:
| What you are paying for | Common duplication |
|---|---|
| Cloud storage | Dropbox and Google One and iCloud, all part-used |
| Music | A music service plus a video service that includes music |
| Video | Four streaming services, three of which you open twice a year |
| Password management | A paid manager plus the one built into your browser |
| Audiobooks | A dedicated service plus hours included in a subscription you already have |
The overlap category is the highest-conviction cut available, because you are not losing a capability. You already have it twice.
4. Actually switching to something else
Last, because it is genuinely the least likely to happen. People are attached to their tools and their libraries, and switching has a real cost in time and irritation that rarely appears in articles like this one.
It is worth it in a few specific cases, though.
Where the alternative is free and good enough. Password managers are the clearest example — the free tier of a well-regarded manager does what most people need. Office suites are similar. So are basic photo editors.
Where you are paying for a name. Mobile networks are the strongest case. Budget operators frequently run on the same physical towers as the expensive ones. You lose retail store support and gain an obvious saving each month.
Where one payment replaces a recurring one. Some creative software is sold outright rather than by subscription. Spread over three years the monthly equivalent is a fraction of a subscription, and you keep the software when you stop paying.
Where a free public option exists. Library apps give free ebooks and audiobooks with a library card, which competes directly with two of the most common subscriptions people hold.
And the cases where switching is usually a mistake: anything holding years of your own data with no clean export, anything your work depends on, and anything where the alternative is free because it is unmaintained.
Read the trade-off before you switch
Every alternative gives something up. Articles that recommend switches without saying what you lose are not helping you.
Before changing anything, write down the one feature you would miss most, and check the alternative has it. Ad-free playback. Offline downloads. Sharing with family. A specific file format. If the alternative does not have it, the saving is not a saving — it is a downgrade you will reverse in a month, having wasted an afternoon.
Where to start
Work down the list in order. Annual billing and lower tiers first, because they require nothing of you. Then duplicates. Then, and only then, consider actually switching anything.
If you would rather not do this manually, Under the Mark has a cheaper-options page covering 62 common services with 149 alternatives — lower tiers, annual pricing and free replacements — each with its trade-off written out. It matches them against the subscriptions on your own list and shows what you would save per year. It is free and nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Prices there are shown in US dollars and not converted, deliberately: exchange rates move, and a stale converted figure is worse than an honest one you can convert yourself.
Once you have decided what to drop, our guide on how to cancel any subscription covers what the retention teams will try first.