With the cost of living doing its thing and subscriptions piling up, I’ve started reviewing what I actually get value from and which ones are just quietly draining my account every month.
Curious what others think:
Which one UK-based subscription (streaming, news, fitness, food, tech anything really) do you think genuinely earns its monthly fee?
And bonus points if there’s one you used to think was worth it but ended up cancelling.
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A decent wine subscription.
readly – get massive value out of it.
Amazon Prime, get the quick and free delivery plus the TV and films. Works for me far more than the TV licence which I’m legally obliged to pay just to watch live events on Prime even though I’ve already paid for Prime.
I think my gym subscription is worth the money as it’s less than £20 a month and I get gym plus loads of fitness classes. Problem is actually getting there when I have anxiety.
Pact coffee is really good.
This https://shop.bl.uk/products/tales-of-the-weird-subscription every book has been good it comes with a couple of little extras and gets me to hit pause, sit down and lose myself in a book for a while which is a very simple yet positive thing to do for maintaining good mental health
Viz
I subscribe to Nutracheck for calories and macros. Simple and minimalistic compared to others.
I loved Degusta Box back in the day. Cancelled it a few years ago when it came basically filled with overpriced vegan snacks and organic kitchen staples a few months in a row. The variety was great before that.
Bit random but British Library’s Takes of the Weird subscription is great value imo.
My only subscription is netflix, it gets plenty of use so although they recently raised the price I still think it’s worth it.
I don’t like enough shows or order enough online to justify prime. In fact Amazon rarely get any business from me as it’s quite hard to find enough stuff that is actually theirs to get a free delivery. So I go elsewhere on the odd occasion I need to order stuff
BBC licence fee, I think represents really good value for money.
Or the TV licence fee I promise I’m not the press.
The milkman.
Organic milk in glass bottles and eggs delivered to my door. Delivery is free.
Works out about £3 more a month than buying direct from tesco. My only frustration is that their range isn’t bigger, but they are working on it.
McQueens Dairy.
YouTube premium. I get a music playlist app,no adverts ever, passive streaming (streaming with the phone in standby) and the ability to download videos.
Crunchyroll! It’s really cheap compared to other streaming services and if you pay up front for a year you get a big discount.
Spotify for me use it every day at work
OS Maps. Although… I think I’m on a cheaper annual rate than the default as I’ve had it a while now (just looked and it appears it’s now £39.99 for a year, so yeah, I’m doing alright at £28.99).
Interesting actually, would I continue with it at that cost… Hmm… Not actually sure.
I do really like having good quality mapping at my fingertips though!
The TV license. What you get for the money is excellent. Every TV channel, plus the BBC iPlayer.
Also YouTube Premium. I use that basically every single day.
YouTube Premium and Sonagi Korean sheet masks. Music to keep me sane at work and a bit of self care.
Milkman. Interesting product range at certain times of the year. Yes, it’s more expensive but a one-off veg box at Christmas to avoid going to the supermarket? Great. I get two pints a month just to keep my emergency credit card active.
I don’t think there is only one but I’m going to be controversial and say Sky Sports. £35 a month for football, rugby, cricket, darts and the rest – it’s excellent value for someone who watches as much sport as I do.
Please don’t reply telling me the nefarious ways of watching sport – I like to do things legitimately, I like the ability to record things and if nobody paid, nobody would be getting it free either.
Plex Pass
Real debrid
Subscriptions suck
Saw a similar question a few months ago and I mentioned the NHS Pre-Pay scheme. If you’re on multiple meds each month and pay for your prescriptions this can save you an absolute fortune.
Kindle unlimited for me. I read a couple of books a week at least, have discovered some great new series’s and authors and the ability to use the app on lymphoma means breaks at work are more enjoyable
The only ones I haven’t cancelled are Spotify and Audible
Probably prime, but only if your household actually uses all the different bits it comes with (not just delivery + video) like the free games off prime gaming
4od
Spotify.
Swimming and signing up to the Pateron of my favourite podcaster also. But Spotify is the one I use the most.
NYT games for me. A few minutes a of entertainment a day and actually gives the brain a bit of exercise.
The licence fee. Yes, I know, I know. But the radio , TV, News, website, iPlayer etc you get for the amount it pretty amazing.
I have boring subscriptions that free up my brain space and mean I don’t run out of basic stuff.
Smol – washing machine liquitabs, dishwasher tablets, hand soap and cleaning sprays (you buy reusable bottles and then they send you tablets that dissolve in water). All of them come in cardboard boxes that fit through the letterbox.
FFS – razor heads.
Kinkind – shampoo, conditioner and shave bars.
ZooPlus – cat food and cat litter.
Cineworld Unlimited
Only need to go twice a month to get value out of it. Usually end up going to see pretty much everything.
If I had to cancel all bar one then I would keep the gym. £38 per month, access to gym, classes and swimming at all ex-council gyms in the area.
I like my other subs too- Spotify, Netflix, dog food.
I have lots of subscriptions and some are great value, some really aren’t
I have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ and I’d say on average I watch about 30 hours a month of each so good value at less than 30p an hour.
Also have Amazon Music Unlimited, PlayStation+ and The Times/Sunday Times subscriptions. Not too bad at between 50p and £1 and hour
BBC license fee. I occasionally watch some of MOTD if I’m interested in the games, and usually Masterchef. So about £5.50 an hour which is daylight robbery!
Don’t think anyone mentioned it yet but odoens mylimitless membership which is so worth it with the cost of a single movie ticket nowadays anyway
I’ve been subscribed to Spotify for 14 years now…
Audible is pretty good if you like audiobooks. With paper books I find they often just sit on the side never read but my readings Ng has increased a lot with audible. There’s frequent offers on the subscription and if you want you can just buy credits. For all the issues with Amazon pushing way more money into audiobooks is one of the few uncontroversially good things they’ve done.
Gousto.
I despise the supermarket and having to choose meals and ingredients. I also feel I get a much more varied diet as there are options I wouldn’t usually consider getting from the supermarket.
Wonky coffee. Premium beans at supermarket prices delivered on my schedule, brilliant.
IPTV subscription, £50 a year for all the tv and movie/series i want.
Apple tv if you are barclays premiere customer… its free! But limited shows TBH
I only found out about this today, but if you have a kid that loves Lego you can subscribe to the Lego magazine. It has comics, building ideas, posters and activities. It’s worth the subscription price, since it’s completely free! No delivery charge or anything. It is only once a quarter though. It comes addressed to your child, which is great if your kid likes the idea of getting their own post (kids are weird) and they’ll receive it until the age of ten.
AnyList is really good. You can create a shopping list on there that you can share with whoever you live with, and it updates in real time. Normally it’s my partner who goes to the shop on the way home from work, and I can add things onto the list if I remember something else that we need. It only costs something ridiculous like £15 for the year too.
For me personally, snapfitness and national trust have been absolutely wonderful and soo worth the money for my mental and physical health
YouTube Premium and GamePass Ultimate
Private Eye. Amazing value for quality, thoroughly researched, independent journalism. Not owned by offshore billionaires!
Brew tea. I stopped drinking tea because I stopped enjoying it, teabags always had the weird chemical flavour.
Now I get a bag of loose leaf tea every two months, enough for a cup a day and I really enjoy it.
Kindle unlimited plus my good food app.I read alot of books and used to buy out of charity shops and then send back but now always got a variety of books to read.My good food app is handy for recipes can plan menus using what ingredients I have already and I have made so much great healthy food.
Prime. I use so many amazon services it still makes sense to have it (I don’t pay for unlimited music etc though)
NHS yearly pre pay prescriptions.
Probably my Microsoft Office 365.
the storage is used for all the family’s files the majority of which being photo backups from four active phones. That’s 6Tb with 1Tb for each user on thr plan.
The Office suite for all family members is pretty well used and immensely better than the free browser based versions.
At £10.49 a month it’s worth the cost for the storage alone and office is the bonus
I have a wonky bread box subscription. Every two weeks I get a box of bread delivered and it’s all factory rejects – large crumpets, wonky pancakes, flatbread etc.
Keeps my family and I not having to buy any bread in the week and adds a bit of variety compared to buying the same items always. Cheaper than what we’d pay in the shop too.
Strava because spending money on it guilt trips me into actually running so I can make the most of my membership and see the cool statistics
I also use it to find new routes when im visiting new places and it shows me which ones are busiest and when, so I can feel safer as a woman
We get a weekly veg box from OddBox, and love it.
The premise is the contents are either too big, too small, too wonky, or sometimes just surplus so supermarkets won’t take it. You can have some control over what you get (eg if you never want a particular veg you dislike) but it’s best to mostly go with the flow and work with whatever shows up each week.
It’s relatively cheap for a week’s worth of veg and saves us time – we do a big online supermarket shop about once a month and the veg boxes are all we need in between. You do need to be willing to meal prep around what you get, though.
Very occasionally there’s a bad week where we don’t feel that box’s contents was really worth the price, but plenty of weeks it’s astounding how much stuff we get, and we sometimes skip a week as we’ve got surplus. On average it’s great.
It’s not organic; organic produce is actually worse for the environment than non-organic, on balance (due to lower yield), so we’re fine with that but some might not be. It’s also not exclusively UK sourced but UK centric and no air miles: reducing food waste has a greater net benefit to the environment than avoiding land/sea food mileage.
For me it’s Zwift. At least during the coldest months of the winter. It keeps my fitness at a reasonable level and by that I mean just not disastrous. It’s expensive for anything other than winter.
Runna app if anyone is getting into running. I withheld for so long cause it’s quite expensive. The plan mixed with the instructions to slow down/speed up during the run is so good. Ironically I actually see it being so good value, ill cancel it soon cause I feel like I’ve got enough of a grasp to do it myself.
My gym membership is 30 a month, they have a pool, spa, really good free weights section and all classes are included, well worth the money.
Private eye.
They do a fantastic job of holding government and council to account.
Youtube and Costco!
And I’m assuming the £1-2 a month for an IPTV from Chinese sellers doesn’t count? What about a real debrid then?
Apple Music is sensational. It’s cheaper than Spotify Premium and is much higher quality too, with Lossless included as standard.
It’s the only subscription I will never consider cancelling.
Claude.ai, amazing ai system and helps me through so much of everyday life. It can be free but you get limited access.
Can I get a specific item in the back of my car? Don’t need to guess, just ask Claude. How much material for that garden project? Claude knows, and can even draw up the plans.
Need to write 200 lines of code for that home automation project? Nah. Give it to Claude.
Private eye very good value
Youtube premium for me. I watch more youtube videos than TV/Sport/Streaming Services combined
I only have one: Amazon – I buy few things from them every month, so save on parcels, plus watch a occasional movie and a football game
But if not “free delivery” I’d cancel that, too
It’s actually pay as you go rather than subscription, but it rivals Audible’s prices: Xigxag is a Cornwall based audiobook market.
The biggest advantage of Nedclair . NL is the speed at which it adds the newest movies. No other IPTV platform updates its library this quickly. You get premium content in high resolution, reliable performance, and cross-device compatibility. For movie buffs, it’s a must-have subscription