How to stop a free trial charging you

When you start a trial you agree to a subscription with a delayed first payment. Nothing else is promised: unless you cancel before it ends, the trial converts and the first full charge goes through. Whether that charge comes from Apple, from Google Play, or from the company itself depends entirely on where you signed up.

That is why cancelling in the wrong place does nothing. A subscription bought inside an iPhone app is billed by Apple, so cancelling on the service's own website changes nothing. A subscription bought on a website is billed by the company, so it will not appear in your App Store subscriptions at all. Which leaves a single question to answer before the deadline: which of the two billed you?

There are only two realistic possibilities, the app store or the company. If you signed up through PayPal or Amazon instead, cancel it there, same principle. Three tells, none of which need a charge to have happened:

• The signup email. Search your inbox for the service name. A receipt-style email from Apple or Google means the store billed it; a welcome from the company itself means the company did.
• The store's subscription list. Apple: Settings, your name, Subscriptions. Google: the Play Store app, profile picture, Payments and subscriptions. If the trial is listed there, that is where it gets cancelled. If it is not listed, it was bought on the website and lives in your account on the service's site.
• How the signup went. If you tapped through a payment sheet labelled App Store or Google Play, the store billed it. If you typed your card details into the service's own page, the company did.

One thing you will not find: your bank statement is silent while a trial is running, because nothing has been taken yet. That is the whole point of a trial, and it is exactly why the deadline matters. By the time a charge appears on the statement, the money has already gone and all that is left is getting it back, which is the section further down. The one exception worth knowing: if your offer is a discounted first month rather than a free one, a small charge does appear, and it names the biller.

On an iPhone or iPad: open Settings, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, tap the subscription, then Cancel Subscription. You may need to scroll down to find the button. If you see no Cancel button, or an expiry date in red text, it is already cancelled. With no Apple device to hand, the same list is on the web at account.apple.com.

Apple's own rule is blunt: cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, or it renews. The charge can go through the day before the trial's end date, so waiting until the final day is how people get caught. Two more things worth knowing: deleting the app does nothing, and after you cancel you keep access until the end of the period you have already paid for.

In the Play Store app: tap your profile picture, then Payments and subscriptions, then Subscriptions, pick the item and tap Cancel subscription. On a computer, play.google.com shows the same page, and it works from any device including an iPhone, because anything billed through Google is cancelled through Google.

Google's timing is simpler than Apple's: cancel any time before the trial ends and the charge does not happen. Do not borrow Apple's 24-hour rule here, because it does not apply. What does apply is the most expensive myth on Android: uninstalling an app does not cancel its subscription. Google says so in its own help pages, and the charges continue regardless. After cancelling, you keep access for the time already paid.

The order matters: cancel first, then chase the refund. Cancelling stops the next charge; it does not refund this one, and a refund request does not stop the billing.

Start with your statement, which does tell you something now: a descriptor naming Apple or Google means the store took the money, and the company's own name means the company did. That decides which of these routes applies.

• Cancel the trial now, wherever it lives, using the sections above.
• Request the refund from whoever charged you. Apple: reportaproblem.apple.com. Google Play: find the order under Payments and subscriptions, then Budget and order history, and choose Report a problem. Google says it does not give refunds for most purchases and that the developer is often the quickest route, so if the store says no, ask the company directly.
• If the company billed you, ask them in writing. Keep it short: you were charged after the trial you meant to cancel, here is the date and the amount, please refund it and confirm the subscription is ended.
• If they refuse, dispute the payment with your bank. Be specific about what went wrong: you cancelled and were charged anyway, the amount is wrong, or the auto-renewal was not made clear at signup. This is a chargeback, and it is a card scheme rule rather than a legal right, so the reason you give decides whether it sticks. If the company can show you agreed to the renewal, they can push back, and time limits apply, so raise it as soon as you spot the charge.

A few limits are worth knowing before you spend time on this. Chargeback is not law, so it is not guaranteed, and on a small monthly charge there is often little for your bank to work with. On a credit card, anything over £100 brings section 75 into play, which makes the card company jointly liable for a misrepresentation or a breach of contract: that is why a disputed annual plan has more behind it than a disputed month. And if the auto-renewal was buried rather than spelled out, say so, because since April 2025 the unfair commercial practices rules treat an unclear or hidden renewal term as a misleading omission, which the CMA enforces. If your bank still says no, ask for a final response and take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free. The full route map, including the Direct Debit route, is in our guide to cancelling any subscription in the UK.

One more pattern worth recognising while you are looking: two identical Google charges in the same month are usually two different subscriptions, not a double charge. Deal with both.

The rules above are manageable once you know them; the problem is remembering. Three habits do most of the work:

• Set a reminder two days before the trial ends, not on the day. It clears Apple's 24-hour line with a margin, and it works for every service regardless of its rules.
• Keep one list of trials and renewals. The calendar trick fails when the trial is one of five; a single list with dates is what catches the ones you forget. Our subscription audit guide covers how to build it in twenty minutes.
• Use a virtual card for trials, as a backstop rather than a substitute. Starling gives current account customers up to five virtual cards for free, and Revolut offers virtual cards too, so a forgotten trial cannot quietly renew on a card you have frozen or deleted. And still cancel the trial itself: blocking a card stops the money, not the agreement.

And one change on the way: under the new UK subscription rules due in January 2027, services will have to be clearer up front and remind you before a trial ends or a plan renews. The detail sits in regulations still being laid, so treat the date as fixed and the mechanics as pending. Until then, that reminder is yours to set, and the full picture is in our guide to cancelling subscriptions in the UK.

Free trials are a deadline problem, not a money problem: find out who bills yours, cancel in the right place before it ends, and the charge never happens. If one has already charged you, the order is cancel, then refund, then the bank.

A tracker can hold the list for you, and ours does: SubCrisp keeps subscriptions and trials on one list and flags a trial that is about to become a real charge. Free to use, with no bank connection required. But nothing in this guide needs one: your inbox, the store lists and your statement already tell the whole story.

The Apple steps and the 24-hour rule come from Apple's own support guidance on cancelling a subscription from Apple. The Google Play steps, including the uninstall myth, come from the Google Play help page on cancelling, pausing or changing a subscription. The dispute limits come from section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, section 227 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, and the Financial Ombudsman Service's guidance on disputed transactions. All were read directly rather than summarised from a third party.