Audit Your Subscriptions with Claude and Replace What You Can

Most people I talk to pay for more software than they use. Nobody decided that. Each subscription made sense on the day it started, and then it just kept renewing. The fix is a short audit, a few honest swaps, and in some cases a small tool Claude builds for you in one conversation. Here is how I would run it.

Start with the real list

Your memory of what you pay for is always shorter than your bank statement. Before you open Claude, collect the truth:

• Card and bank statements for the last three months
• Your Apple or Google account subscriptions page
• Your inbox, searched for words like "receipt," "renewal" and "invoice"

Write each one as a line: tool name, what you actually use it for, and roughly how often. Leave the price column as it appears on your statement. Do not trust a price you remember or one you find in a blog post, plans change constantly.

Run the audit with Claude

Paste the list into a new chat with this prompt. Web search helps here, so keep it on:

Below are my software subscriptions: name, what I use it for,
how often, and what my statement shows.

For each one, give me one verdict:
KEEP: it does something I rely on and a free option would cost me time.
SWAP: a free or open source tool covers what I actually use.
BUILD: I use one small feature that you could build for me as an artifact.
CANCEL: I barely use it.

For SWAP, name the alternative and the honest tradeoff.
For BUILD, describe the tool in one sentence.
Check current free plan limits with web search before recommending
anything, and tell me when you could not confirm them.
Output a table, then list the three changes worth doing first.

[paste your list]

Read the verdicts critically. Claude does not know that a certain tool is how your whole team shares files, or that a client insists on a specific format. You do. Overrule anything that ignores that.

Free tools that hold up

These are well maintained and widely used. For anything not on this list, OpenAlternative is a good directory of open source alternatives that shows how active each project is.

• Image editing: Photopea in the browser, or GIMP on desktop. Inkscape for vectors.
• Interface design: Penpot, open source and self hostable.
• Video editing: DaVinci Resolve has a free version that goes very far.
• Audio and screen recording: Audacity and OBS Studio.
• Notes: Obsidian, which keeps plain files on your own machine.
• Office documents: LibreOffice.
• Scheduling and forms: Cal.com and Tally.
• Automation and databases: n8n, Baserow and Supabase.
• Passwords: Bitwarden.
• Whiteboards: Excalidraw.

Free tiers have limits, and they move. Treat every "free" as "free today, for this much use" and check before you commit.

The BUILD column is where Claude changes the math

A lot of subscriptions exist to do one small thing. A unit converter. A word counter with a reading time. A simple invoice layout. A habit tracker. A color contrast checker. You pay monthly for a whole product to use one screen of it.

Claude can build that one screen as an artifact: a small working app right in the chat. Artifacts are available on every plan, including free. I build little tools like this all the time when I am working on my own apps, and the trick is being specific about what the tool does and does not do:

Build me a small web tool as an artifact.

Job: I paste a block of text and it shows word count, character count,
reading time at 230 words per minute, and the five most repeated words.
Layout: one text box on top, results in a clean row below.
No login, no saving, no extra features.
When you are done, test it with a short paragraph and show me the result.

Use it for a week. If it does the job, that subscription goes. If you keep reaching for the old tool, it was a KEEP after all, and that is useful to know too.

Be honest about the limits. A tool Claude builds is not a product with support, backups and security reviews. Do not rebuild your accounting software, your password manager or anything that stores other people's data. Those earn their price.

Migrate before you cancel

The free tool is the easy part. Moving your stuff is the real work, and the order matters. Export, import, check, and only then cancel. Ask Claude to plan it:

I am moving from [current tool] to [new tool]. I am not technical.
1. Tell me exactly how to export everything from [current tool],
   including anything that usually gets left behind (attachments,
   comments, version history, shared links).
2. Tell me how to import it into [new tool].
3. Give me a checklist to confirm nothing is missing.
If you are unsure how either tool works today, say so and tell me
where in their help pages to check.

Keep the old account active until you have used the new one for real work at least once. Most painful migrations come from canceling on the same day as switching.

Where Claude itself fits

If you already pay for Claude, look at what else on your list overlaps with it. Grammar checking, rewriting, summarizing long documents, transcript cleanup, research digests. These are things a general assistant handles well, and separate tools for each often add a subscription without adding much. That said, if a specialist tool is built into how you work every day, keep it. Saving money on a tool that slows you down is a bad trade.

Do the audit this week, but act on only one line of it. Swap one tool, or build one small replacement, and live with it for a week. When that works, do the next one. A slow cleanup sticks. A dramatic one usually ends with half the subscriptions coming back.