How Many Americans Have Forgotten to Cancel a Streaming Free Trial? New Study Shocks the Experts.
“Free” doesn’t always mean “free”
Free trials are a great way to binge-watch a show you’re interested in without committing to a full service. And with rising streaming service prices, it’s getting harder to maintain subscriptions to every service just for a few exclusives.
But you have to be careful with free trials—they’re only free as long as you remember to cancel them before they’re over.
If you’ve ever forgotten to cancel a free trial, you’re not alone. More people have made that mistake than you’d think, and it’s what subscription services are counting on! So we surveyed 1,000 people to see exactly how many are in the same boat.
Who forgets to cancel trials? More people than you think.
About half (48.0%) of Americans have forgotten to cancel a free trial and accidentally paid more than they expected. And not everyone is able to learn from this mistake—another 48.1% of those people have had it happen multiple times.
Maybe that’s why 43.7% of people feel they overspend on streaming services.
How much money have you accidentally spent on streaming trials?
Of the 470 people who admitted to accidentally letting a trial expire, 43.7% said they’ve been charged $20–$50. And 9% of people have spent over $100 on accidental subscriptions. That’s like a tenth of an iPhone!
Pro tip: When you sign up for a free trial, set a reminder on your phone or in your calendar. Set it a day or two before the trial expires—some services are tricky about deadlines—and commit to canceling if you think you don’t want to subscribe long term.
When should you cancel your free trial?
Luckily for you, we’ve kept tabs on some of the most popular streaming trials, including their fine print. You don’t even have to dig through our archives to find the good stuff—I’ve done the work for you. Here’s a quick overview of each service.
Streaming service free trials can range from 3 to 30 days
Data effective as of post date.
Even if you cancel, most streaming services will let you keep watching your content until the end of your free trial or your next billing date. However, a couple of services are a little stingier: ESPN+ and Amazon Prime Video. Both will cut you off as soon as you cancel, so make sure you’ve watched everything you wanted before you hit that button.
ESPN+ and Prime Video cut you off as soon as you cancel, so be sure to watch everything you want before you hit the unsubscribe button.
Some of these services, like HBO Max and Peacock, might beg you to stay. This is actually good news! If a service is desperate to keep your business, they might send you a discount. Check out our Cancellation Deals Guide for a list of the deals we know of.
Still have questions? Click on the “read more” button in the table above to read our guides to signing up for (and canceling) each listed service.
Our methods
For this survey, we used Pollfish to ask 1000 Americans aged 18 and over to share their spending habits and answer other questions about streaming services. We then stratified results to account for gender and generational composition. This survey took place earlier in 2025.
Why you should trust us
We’re no strangers to a survey at CableTV.com. We pride ourselves in our curiosity, and we’re always curious to see what customers really think about the streaming services we review. That’s why we run a yearly Customer Satisfaction Survey and take real testimonials into account when ranking products and services. For more on our process, head over to our How We Rank page.
