What you need
- ✓ A Muse account (the free tier is enough for this)
- ✓ A Gmail account, or wherever your receipts land
- ✓ About 10 uninterrupted minutes
That is the whole list. No budgeting app, no bank login, no spreadsheet. Muse works from the receipts already sitting in your inbox.
The 10-minute setup
Connect your email
In Muse, connect the Gmail account where your receipts land. You will tap through Google's sign-in and approve access. Read access is all the audit needs.
Give Muse the task brief
Open a fresh chat with Muse and paste the task brief below. Muse will confirm the date range and what counts as a subscription before it starts searching.
Review the findings
Muse returns a table: service, amount, billing frequency, last charge date, annual cost, and its best guess at whether you still use it. It will not act on anything yet.
Approve cancellations
Reply with the ones you want gone. For each, Muse gives you the exact cancellation steps or link. You do the final click. Some services require a phone call, and Muse will write you a short script for it.
The task brief
This is the exact brief to paste into a fresh Muse chat. It tells Muse what to search, what to show you, and the one rule that matters: do nothing until you approve it.
Audit my subscriptions. Search my Gmail for receipts and billing emails from the last 12 months. Find every recurring charge: streaming, apps, memberships, software, magazines, anything billed monthly or annually. Group them by service and show me a table with: service name, amount, billing frequency, date of last charge, and the annual cost. Add your best guess for whether I still use each one, based on what the emails show. Do not cancel anything or contact anyone. Present the list and wait for me to tell you which ones to cancel. When I approve one, give me the exact steps or link to cancel that specific service.
What good output looks like
After a few minutes, Muse should come back with something like this. If yours looks roughly like this, the audit worked. (Illustrative example: the services, amounts, and verdicts below are made up to show the format. Your real report will list your actual charges.)
| Service | Amount | Annual cost | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spotify | $11.99/mo | $143.88 | Likely in use: keep |
| Crave | $23.99/mo | $287.88 | No sign of use in 6 months: cancel? |
| Norton 360 | $119.99/yr | $119.99 | Renewed Aug 20, may overlap other coverage: cancel? |
| iCloud+ 50 GB | $1.29/mo | $15.48 | Likely in use: keep |
Total found: $567.23 per year. Potential savings if you cancel the flagged ones: $407.87 per year.
Reply with the names of the ones to cancelThe annual-cost column is the whole trick. A $23.99 monthly charge feels small; $287.88 a year for a service you never open does not.
What Muse does, and what stays with you
This is the part most prompt sites skip. Here is the exact split, so nothing ever happens you did not ask for:
Muse does on its own
- Searches your receipts and builds the subscription list.
- Adds up annual costs and flags services with no sign of use.
- Finds cancellation steps, links, phone numbers, and writes call scripts.
Needs your explicit OK
- Nothing is cancelled, contacted, or changed until you name the service. "Cancel Crave" is an instruction; Muse never infers it.
- The task brief above includes the wait-for-approval line on purpose. Keep it in; it is the safety rail.
You do yourself
- The final click (or call) for every cancellation. Some gyms and Canadian carriers still require a phone call; Muse writes the script, you make the call.
- If a telecom or TV provider refuses a legitimate cancellation or drags it out, you can escalate through the CRTC's complaint page, which routes to the CCTS, Canada's independent ombudsman for telecom and TV disputes.
When something goes wrong
Just tell your Muse what happened in plain words. The brief already sets up the common cases:
| Symptom | What to say |
|---|---|
| Muse can't find my subscriptions | Widen the search. Say "look back 24 months" and check whether receipts go to a second email address. Family plans often bill under one person's name, so search for those too. |
| Muse flags one-time purchases | Tell it "that one is a one-off, not a subscription." It will drop it from the list and get better at telling the difference for the rest. |
| Muse missed a subscription billed to someone else | Family plans and shared accounts bill under one person's name. Ask Muse to search receipts for that family member's name too, and to check for Apple and Google subscription emails, which bill through the app store instead of the vendor. |
| A service won't let me cancel online | Ask Muse for that company's cancellation phone number and a short call script. Some Canadian carriers and gyms still require a call; a two-minute script beats a forty-minute retention pitch. If a telecom or TV provider refuses a legitimate cancellation, file a complaint with the CCTS, linked in the section above. |
Frequently asked questions
Can Muse actually cancel subscriptions for me?
No. Muse cannot log into your Netflix, Spotify, or gym account. What it does: finds every recurring charge, prices it, and hands you the exact cancellation steps or link for each one. You click the final button, which takes about a minute per service.
Which email should I connect?
The one where receipts land. For most people that is Gmail. If some bills go to a second address, run the audit a second time with that inbox connected.
How far back should Muse look?
Twelve months. A monthly-only search misses the expensive ones: annual renewals like Amazon Prime, antivirus software, and domain renewals that charge once a year.
Is it safe to let Muse read my receipts?
The audit needs read access to your email, nothing more. Muse reads the receipts to build your list, and you can remove the email connection when you are done.
What about subscriptions billed through Apple or Google?
Those do not show up in email receipts. They live in your iPhone Settings under Subscriptions, or in Google Play under Payments and subscriptions. Ask Muse to walk you through checking both lists; it takes about two minutes.
How often should I repeat the audit?
Every six months. New free trials and annual renewals creep back in. Put a reminder on your calendar; the second run takes about five minutes because Muse already knows the drill.