--- title: "How to audit your subscriptions with an agent" slug: how-to-audit-subscriptions-with-an-agent url: https://bankbridge.money/guides/how-to-audit-subscriptions-with-an-agent category: how-to published: 2026-04-23 updated: 2026-04-23 --- # How to audit your subscriptions with an agent > Ask your agent to list every recurring charge on your accounts sorted by monthly cost. It calls get_recurring_charges, groups by merchant, and reports the full picture in seconds. Typical audit finds 2–4 subscriptions you forgot about plus 1–2 you meant to cancel. Audit Subscriptions with an AI Agent | BankBridge | BankBridge [How-to](/guides/how-to) # How to audit your subscriptions with an agent Updated Apr 23, 2026·5 min read Ask your agent to list every recurring charge on your accounts sorted by monthly cost. It calls get\_recurring\_charges, groups by merchant, and reports the full picture in seconds. Typical audit finds 2–4 subscriptions you forgot about plus 1–2 you meant to cancel. ## Why this is worth 15 minutes Subscriptions are the cheapest category to trim because you're not giving up anything you use. The average BankBridge audit finds $40–$120/mo of forgotten or silently-price-bumped charges. That's $500–$1,500/year for fifteen minutes of work. The reason people skip the audit: finding subscriptions by hand means scrolling months of transactions looking for repeating amounts. The agent does it in one tool call. ## The four-step audit Each step is a single message to your agent. Total time with a coffee in hand: fifteen minutes. ### 1\. List every recurring charge > “List every recurring charge across all my accounts, sorted by monthly cost. Include yearly ones converted to a monthly equivalent.” The agent calls `get_recurring_charges` and formats the result. Yearly charges usually show up with their cadence marked, and the agent helpfully divides by 12 if you ask. Scan for anything that makes you blink. ### 2\. Flag the ghosts > “Which of those subscriptions have I probably stopped using? Use your best guess based on context clues.” This is where an agent beats a spreadsheet. The model knows which services overlap (three streaming services might be redundant), which are seasonal (a golf app in January), and which you've probably forgotten about (a “30-day free trial” that started converting to $19.99/mo four months ago). The agent won't be right about every guess, but it'll be right about enough to save real money. ### 3\. Spot the price creep > “For each subscription, has the price changed in the last twelve months? Show me the before and after.” The agent calls `get_merchant_history` for each merchant and compares recent charges to older ones. Streaming services bump prices yearly; SaaS tools bump “quietly”; gym memberships creep up with the local cost of living. The before-and-after is sometimes surprising. ### 4\. Cancel and re-run next month Cancel from each service's website. The agent can't do this step because BankBridge is read-only. Give the cancellations a month to propagate, then re-run the four steps. Charges that successfully cancelled will drop off the recurring list; anything still hanging around probably bills on a weird cadence and might need a second cancellation pass. Pair this with [the monthly money review](/guides/agent-powered-monthly-money-review) and the audit becomes a habit instead of a one-time thing. ## What the agent misses - Quarterly or semi-annual charges with only 2 occurrences in the data window. The detector requires 3. - Charges where the merchant string varies wildly month-to-month (some gyms, some local services with rotating processors). - Stripe-batched pass-through charges from your employer or accountant: those aren't subscriptions from your side, but they look like them. For anything suspect, ask the agent to search transactions for the merchant name directly. That picks up the fuzzy cases. ## FAQ Does the agent actually cancel subscriptions? No. BankBridge is read-only; we can't initiate cancellations. The agent tells you what to cancel and where to do it, and you click through. Most subscriptions take 60 seconds to cancel once you know they exist. What counts as 'recurring'? Our detector flags similar merchant + similar amount + at least three occurrences at roughly the same interval (weekly, biweekly, monthly, yearly). Quarterly or semi-annual charges sometimes get missed on the first pass. My gym charge didn't show up. Why? Gym billing descriptors often vary month-to-month (different processor batches). Ask the agent to search for the gym name explicitly; search\_transactions picks up the fuzzy-matching ones the recurring detector misses. ## FAQ ### Does the agent actually cancel subscriptions? No. BankBridge is read-only; we can't initiate cancellations. The agent tells you what to cancel and where to do it, and you click through. Most subscriptions take 60 seconds to cancel once you know they exist. ### What counts as 'recurring'? Our detector flags similar merchant + similar amount + at least three occurrences at roughly the same interval (weekly, biweekly, monthly, yearly). Quarterly or semi-annual charges sometimes get missed on the first pass. ### My gym charge didn't show up. Why? Gym billing descriptors often vary month-to-month (different processor batches). Ask the agent to search for the gym name explicitly; search_transactions picks up the fuzzy-matching ones the recurring detector misses.