Keep Above
Pay yearly or monthly
The same subscription, two price tags. This calculator totals both over the months you'd actually use it — with the annual side paying one whole payment for every year or part-year, because that lumpiness is the real shape of the deal. 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 | — | — |
Why is the break-even month the same whatever you're paying for?
The crossing comes from the two prices and nothing else — the annual payment divided by the monthly one, rounded up to a whole month. Nothing about what is being billed moves it, and neither does how long you mean to stay; that month is fixed the moment both figures are typed in.
What the prices cannot fix is what stopping costs. A year already paid for does not give back its unused months, and a part-year on the far side of a renewal still takes a whole annual payment, so month thirteen buys a second year for one month of use. That lumpiness is why the comparison is worth running at all, and it is exactly the part the break-even month says nothing about.
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
What does leaving early do to the comparison?
The page totals whole months of use, so an exit simply lands wherever it lands in the month-by-month table. What the arithmetic cannot show is the asymmetry underneath it: months already paid for on an annual plan do not come back, while a monthly plan stops at the next billing date. That sits outside the two prices and belongs to your own read of how long you would keep it.
Why does a part-year cost a whole annual payment?
Because that is how annual billing works: month 13 triggers a full second year. Pro-rating it would smooth away the exact lumpiness the comparison exists to show. The month-by-month table makes each renewal's jump visible.
Why do the per-month figures show cents?
A yearly price divided by twelve rarely lands on a round figure, and rounding it would hide the very difference this page exists to show, so the per-month row keeps two decimals while every other figure stays whole.