--- title: How to Avoid Paying for a Subscription After the Free Trial Ends description: Here's how to avoid getting charged after the free trial period expires for Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Amazon Prime, and Apple Music. authors: - name: Ethan Wolff-Mann url: https://money.com/author/ethan-wolff-mann/ at_money_since: 2015 articles: 160 covers: - Personal Finance - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Professional Services - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://x.com/ewolffmann former_staff: true published: '2016-02-10T20:45:58.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T09:58:24.000Z' section: Personal Finance tags: - Entertainment - Hulu - Media - Netflix - Spotify - streaming word_count: 538 canonical: https://money.com/cancel-account-after-free-trial-hulu-netflix-spotify/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Netflix website](https://img.money.com/2016/02/160209_em_trials.jpg) About a month and a half ago I was at home when the mail came. I said hello to the mail carrier, who was very cheery, and immediately thought of Newman from "Seinfeld." Soon, after opening up my credit card statement, I realized I was 18 days into a one-week free trial for Hulu, which has all of 180 episodes of "Seinfeld." My credit card was harpooned by a $7.99 charge. I had been caught like a tuna. The humiliation was mildly palliated by the enormous library of 20-minute masterpieces I began to enjoy, but I wondered, *was there a simply way I could have avoided this?* You know, without having to keep track of the free-trial period and manually canceling before it ended? After all, a one-week Seinfeld binge was all I was after. This is easier said than done with some of the free trials readily available out there. For certain services, [such as **Apple Music**](https://money.com/apple-music-auto-renewal/), you can cancel during the free trial but still enjoy the remainder of the free period, with the knowledge that you won't be charged all of a sudden. **[Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/getstarted)** also lets you cancel and then enjoy the remainder of the free one-month trial. And as well they should. From the business side of things, a long, free--and *stress-free*\--trial would seem like the more effective way to get a customer hooked on the product for the long haul, as opposed to making the customer feel like a sucker and charging his credit card because he forgets to cancel. **Read Next: [How to Watch All the TV You Want Without Paying for Cable](https://money.com/cable-tv-without-paying-bill/)** Similarly, **[Spotify](https://www.spotify.com/us/)** lets you serve out the remainder of your free 30-day term if you decided to punch out early. Just disable the automatic renew feature, and you're good. If you're doing an **[Amazon Prime](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DBYBNEE?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=nav_logo_prime_join)** 30-day free trial, make sure you go into your preferences and turn off the automatic renew feature if you don't want to be charged. As for **[Hulu](http://www.hulu.com/welcome)**, the only proactive recourse I could have taken would have been to set a calendar reminder to cancel the free trial before my credit card was charged. But according to a discussion on Reddit there was a tactic I should have employed. Some lucky Hulu users say they waited until the trial's penultimate day to cancel were actually rewarded with [full month of free Hulu](https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/2xe7xj/ysk_that_you_can_get_an_extra_free_month_of_hulu/). That could be worth a try for someone seeking "Seinfeld" without syndication. Hulu's exceptionalism with its ultra-short trial period and inability to disable the automatic renewal is unfortunate for users who don't want to be nudged past a free trial, but it's also doesn't make much sense for Hulu. Favoring a model that gives consumers a longer, risk-free period to get hooked seems like a much better strategy than Hulu's, which amounts to getting a credit card number and hoping people forget to cancel after the unusually brief trial period. If you, like me, end up mistakenly paying for a month of Hulu, you can cancel immediately to prevent any further charges. Instead of getting a refund pro-rated to the days you used, you'll get to use the service through the end of the month. 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