Americans Spend $1,100 a Year on Subscriptions, Survey Finds

A new CNET survey finds Americans spend close to $1,100 a year on subscriptions, with about $200 going to services they rarely or never use. The data land as a federal appeals court has blocked the FTC’s click-to-cancel rule, leaving consumers more responsible for tracking and ending unwanted charges.

Why it matters: - Subscription creep is draining household budgets in a way many consumers do not fully notice. - The surveys suggest recurring charges are harder to track than most people think, which can turn small monthly fees into a meaningful annual loss. - The rollback of the FTC’s click-to-cancel rule means simpler cancellation is not arriving anytime soon.

What happened: - A 2025 CNET survey conducted with YouGov found Americans spend close to $1,100 a year on subscription services. - About $200 of that spending goes to products respondents rarely or never use. - The survey sampled 2,440 adults, and 1,932 said they had paid for at least one subscription in the past year. - Sixty-one percent said they were reconsidering at least one subscription because of economic concerns. - One in four respondents had already canceled a paid service. - An earlier C+R Research study asked 1,000 consumers to estimate monthly subscription spending and compared those estimates with actual totals.

The details: - Consumers in the C+R Research study estimated they spent $86 a month on subscriptions. - They actually spent $219 a month on average, or $133 more than they thought. - Seventy-four percent said recurring charges were easy to forget. - Seventy-two percent said all of their subscription payments were on auto-pay. - Forty-two percent said they had stopped using a service but forgot they were still paying for it. - In July 2025, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the FTC’s negative option rule, often called the click-to-cancel rule, days before it was set to take effect. - The rule would have required sellers to make cancellation as easy as signing up. - The FTC has since moved to restart the rulemaking. - MoneyPilot is a subscription-management service based in Sheridan, Wyoming. - More information is available at moneypilot.com. - The release says MoneyPilot helps people see recurring charges in one place and decide which to keep. - The release also says access to the platform requires a paid subscription.

Between the lines: - The studies point to a visibility problem more than a willingness-to-pay problem. - Automatic billing and low attention make it easy for subscriptions to keep running after consumers stop using them. - With the click-to-cancel rule blocked, regular self-review remains the main tool for cutting waste. - MoneyPilot is using the survey data to reinforce a broader argument for subscription tracking tools.

What’s next: - Consumers are likely to keep facing the same cancellation process unless the FTC completes a new rulemaking. - Households that want to cut waste may need to audit recurring charges themselves. - The most immediate savings are likely to come from subscriptions that have slipped out of view rather than from major lifestyle changes.

The bottom line: - Americans are paying for subscriptions they do not use, and the system still makes those charges easy to miss and hard to stop.