Keep Above
Software subscription: pay yearly or monthly
The same software, two price tags. This calculator totals both over the months the subscription would actually stay in use — with the annual side paying one whole payment for every year or part-year started, which is what switching tools in month nine really costs. The break-even month is stated as a fact, the month-by-month table shows the crossings, and no winner is declared.
A part-year still costs a whole annual payment
Put in the monthly price and the yearly price for the same thing. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| Yearly | Monthly | |
|---|---|---|
| One payment | — | — |
| Payments over the period | — | — |
| Total over 12 months | — | — |
| Works out per month | — | — |
What happens to your files when a subscription lapses?
A subscription usually ends without a minimum term, so the exit here is not about contract months — it is about what stops working. Work made inside a tool often stays in that tool's own format, and when the subscription lapses the files can sit on the disk while the thing that opens them does not. Where that applies, the real length of the commitment is however long the work has to stay readable, not however long the tool is in use.
The other difference from a term-based plan is what happens on a switch partway through: a monthly plan stops at the end of the month it is cancelled in, while an annual one has usually been paid to a date, and that date rarely lines up with the day a project ends. So the months figure on the annual side is not the months it would be used — it is the months it would be paid for, rounded up to the next renewal.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
A yearly bill is the plainest case for putting a little aside each pay rather than meeting it all at once — how budgeting apps handle money set aside for later bills.
About this calculator
Why does a part-year cost a whole annual payment?
Because that is how annual billing works: month 13 triggers a full second year, and a subscription dropped in month nine still cost the whole annual price. Pro-rating would smooth away exactly the lumpiness this comparison exists to show; the month-by-month table makes each renewal's jump visible.
What does the months field do here?
It sets how long the subscription would actually stay in use — tools get replaced and projects end, and the two billing shapes price that differently. The totals, the break-even month and the table run over that span, with the annual side charged a whole payment for every year or part-year inside it.
Why do the per-month figures show cents?
Rounding $119 a year to $10 a month beside a $10 monthly price would destroy the exact comparison the page exists for, so the per-month row keeps two decimals while everything else stays whole.
Can you still open your work after an annual plan ends?
That is a question about the tool rather than about the billing, and neither price above answers it. Some tools write to formats other software can open, in which case a lapse costs the tool and nothing else. Others keep the work in a format only they read, and a lapse then costs access to what was made. The difference appears nowhere in this arithmetic, which is why it sits here in words instead.