The 2026 Subscription Exit Report

Most subscriptions are easy to leave

Of the 159 brands we graded, 95 earned an A or a B: you can cancel yourself, online, in a click or two. Streaming is the clearest example. Six of the eight streaming services we track are straight A grades, and none are harder than a C. If every category behaved like streaming, this report would be one paragraph long.

They do not. The friction is real, but it is concentrated in a handful of categories, and once you know where it lives it stops being a surprise.

Where the friction lives

Three categories account for most of the pain. Pet insurance is the hardest we track: six of eight plans are a grade D, typically requiring a phone call and a wait to close a policy. The paywalled press is close behind. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal make you route through a chat agent instead of clicking a cancel button. And gyms are the category where friction crosses into documented findings, which brings us to the four.

The documented four

An F is not for a service that is merely annoying to quit. We reserve it for a documented finding: a case where a regulator has acted, or the process is outright deceptive. Four brands in our catalog earned one, and in every case a regulator acted in 2025.

We want to be precise about what that F means. It is a statement about a cancellation process and a public regulatory record, not a verdict on whether the product is any good. A brand can run a fine gym and still make leaving harder than it should be. The grade is there to tell you that up front.

Why this is a good year to look

Cancellation friction has moved from a private annoyance to a public priority. Regulators and lawmakers spent 2025 focused on it, from the FTC’s work on click-to-cancel rules to the wave of state actions above. The direction of travel is clear: getting out is supposed to be as easy as getting in. Our grades are a running measure of which brands are already there and which still have work to do.

What you can do about it

You do not have to memorize any of this. The reason a hard-to-cancel service catches people out is timing: the renewal arrives before you remember to act. Track a subscription with us and a reminder lands before every renewal, so the grade stops mattering. You decide to stay or go on your terms, with the exact steps in hand.