Subcut

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  Cancel subscriptions easily

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  Import subscriptions from email/bank statement

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  Calendar first view

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  Easily see everything you're spending money on

Inspiration

I looked at my own bank statements one day and found three subscriptions I've been paying for months without using. A meditation app (ironically, it caused more stress than it cured), a streaming service I signed up for during one show's finale, and a cloud storage plan I forgot existed. Figured that if I, someone who works in tech, couldn't keep track, busy moms juggling a household, kids, and 47 other things had zero chance. So I built the thing I wished existed.

What it does

Subcut finds every subscription your family is paying for, puts them on a calendar so you can see when charges hit, sends you reminders before renewals, and gives you direct cancellation links for 210+ services. Import everything from your email or a bank statement in about 60 seconds. No bank login required, fully secure. It's basically a financial audit that fits between school pickup and soccer practice.

How we built it

Native iOS with SwiftUI, Core Data + CloudKit for sync, and RevenueCat for subscriptions (yes, I am using a subscription manager to manage our subscription manager, totally aware of the irony). Email import runs through Gmail OAuth with a two-stage pipeline: [redacted] and [redacted]. Mostly everything processes on-device because we're genuinely paranoid about financial data privacy especially when it's a family's financial data.

Challenges we ran into

Getting subscription detection right was humbling. Bank statements are a mess. Every bank formats them differently, merchant names are cryptic ("AMZN DIGITAL" could be Kindle, Audible, Prime, or Music), and some charges show up under parent company names nobody recognizes. I went through several rounds of fuzzy matching algorithms before landing on a weighted Levenshtein approach that doesn't accidentally merge your Netflix and New York Times.

Also, families have subscriptions scattered across multiple accounts - mom's card, dad's card, the App Store, the family Google account. Making that easy to consolidate without requiring bank credentials was a design puzzle I am still proud of solving.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The privacy architecture. I realised that I can build a subscription tracker securely without ever touching someone's bank credentials. No Plaid, no financial data APIs. You upload a file or scan your email - we parse it and forget it. When moms are trusting you with their family's financial picture, that feels like the only right way to do it.

Also, 14 languages and 210 cancellation guides. Because a mom in Tokyo dealing with forgotten subscriptions deserves the same help as a mom in Texas.

What we learned

People massively underestimate their family's subscription spending. Like, consistently and dramatically. The average family finds 2-4 forgotten subscriptions within the first minute of using Subcut — the kids' learning app that auto-renewed, the partner's sports streaming nobody watches, the second music service because nobody coordinated. We also learned that free trials are essentially a business model built on human forgetfulness — and that giving a busy mom a simple reminder before auto-renewal feels almost radical.

On the technical side: RevenueCat sandbox keys work fine in development but silently crash on TestFlight. That was a fun 2 AM debugging session.

What's next for Subcut

Family sharing - so both parents can see the same subscription list without playing the "did you cancel that thing?" game over dinner. Smarter spending insights that spot trends over time ("your streaming costs went up 40% in 6 months"). And we're exploring widgets so a busy mom can glance at upcoming charges from her home screen without even opening the app. Maybe some suggestions to manage her budget as well? The goal stays the same: spend 60 seconds in Subcut, save hundreds over the year. Money saved is money earned.

Built With

• cloudkit
• core-data
• swiftui