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AI Agent·Weekly · Monday 9:00 UTC·Free on Spark

Subscription Watchdog

Subscription Watchdog scans every recurring charge across your connected accounts every week. It flags price increases, surfaces likely-cancelled subscriptions (so you can stop paying for things you no longer use), and warns when a free trial converts to paid.

Subscription Watchdog · Sample nudge

Netflix increased from $15.49 to $24.99/mo. Annual impact: about $114 more than last year. Worth reviewing whether the Premium tier still fits your usage.

The problem

The average household has 12+ recurring subscriptions and adds 2-3 per year. Price hikes are silent. Trial conversions are quiet. Cancelled subscriptions sometimes keep charging for months because the merchant uses a different descriptor. Manually auditing all of this every month is a chore nobody actually does - which is exactly why subscription drift is the most expensive habit in personal finance.

How it works

For every detected recurring charge, the agent compares the two most recent transactions. If the latest is more than 5% higher than the prior, it flags a price increase with the exact dollar delta. Separately, it tracks days-since-last-seen against the expected cadence: if a monthly subscription hasn't charged in 45+ days (1.5× cadence) it surfaces as likely-cancelled with confirm/snooze inline buttons. After 90+ days (3× cadence) without a charge the entry auto-deactivates silently - at that point the subscription is overwhelmingly likely gone and the user has had multiple weeks of prior nudges.

A real example

"Netflix went from $15.49 to $24.99/mo - that's +$114/year"

Two months ago Netflix posted at $15.49. This month it posted at $24.99. The agent computes the delta (+$9.50/mo, +$114/year), generates an educational nudge with the specific numbers, and surfaces it in the next morning's digest. No action is forced - you decide whether the new price is still worth it.

Want Subscription Watchdog running on your accounts?

Free on the Spark tier - no credit card required. Connect your bank read-only via Plaid; the agent starts watching from the first sync.

Try FinNudge free →No credit card · 5 minutes to connect

FAQ

How does it know which charges are recurring?

A separate detection pipeline runs after every Plaid sync, grouping transactions by merchant and finding repeated patterns with consistent gaps. Confidence scores reflect how regular the pattern is - a perfectly monthly charge gets close to 1.0; an irregular pattern stays below 0.6 and prompts you to verify before the watchdog starts tracking it.

What if I cancelled but want to keep tracking it?

When the likely-cancelled nudge appears, you have two inline buttons: "Yes, cancelled" deactivates the entry (history is preserved), and "Still active" snoozes the warning for 30 days. Useful for annual subscriptions that bill once a year.

Does it work for non-Plaid accounts?

Yes - manual transactions get the same detection pipeline. The agent runs on whatever data is in your transactions table, regardless of source.

Other agents

Spending Patrol
Flags charges that are unusual for a merchant - fraud, mistakes, lifestyle creep.
Anomaly Detector
Catches duplicate posts, weird patterns, and quiet refund failures across your accounts.
Cashflow Monitor
Warns when your daily burn rate is on track to exceed your income before month-end.
Savings Coach
Tracks every savings goal and nudges with realistic per-month contributions to hit each deadline.
Net Worth Monitor
Tracks balance shifts across all accounts daily and surfaces meaningful movements.