Subscriptions hide in a different menu than purchases

Receipt A · one-off

App purchase / in-app item

Appears inPurchase & order history
Recurring?No
Deleted with the app?Access, not the charge
Refund request livesOrder history → report a problem
Cancel button?Nothing to cancel

One transaction. It ends when it ends.

Receipt B · recurring

Subscription

Appears inA separate Subscriptions list
Recurring?Yes, until you stop it
Deleted with the app?No. Billing continues
Refund request livesOrder history, separately again
Cancel button?Stops the next charge only

An authorisation, not a purchase. It has no end date until you give it one.

Two panels drawn by Dlzer from the vendors’ own descriptions of where each thing lives. Not a screenshot of any real screen.

The most expensive sentence in consumer app billing is the one nobody reads: the list of things you bought and the list of things you are signed up for are not the same list. They are in different menus, they are cancelled in different places, and one of them keeps charging after you have deleted the app it came from.

01Where each one lives

On an iPhone or iPad, purchases and refunds run through your order history, while subscriptions have their own management screen. Apple documents the subscription side like this:

“In Settings, tap your name. Tap Subscriptions. Tap the subscription. Tap Cancel Subscription. You might need to scroll down to find the Cancel Subscription button. If there is no Cancel button or you see an expiration message in red text, the subscription is already canceled.”
Apple Support, “Cancel a subscription from Apple”, published 29 September 2026.

On Android the equivalent list sits under the Play Store’s payments area rather than anywhere near the app itself. Verify on device Google’s help centre was not reachable from our network when this was prepared, so treat the path below as something to confirm rather than as a quotation: open the Play Store, tap your profile, then the payments and subscriptions area, then Subscriptions. The list there covers every subscription billed by the store, active and cancelled.

Purchases & refunds

What you already paid for

Apple Account→Purchase history
Play Store→Budget & order history

This is where a refund request goes in. It is also where a subscription charge appears after it has already happened — a record, not a control.

Subscriptions

What is authorised to keep paying

Settings→your name→Subscriptions
Play Store→Payments & subscriptions→Subscriptions

This is the only place the recurring charge can be stopped. Nothing in the purchase history will do it, and nothing in the app will either.

Printed card-terminal receipts in a small stack on a green surface; the top slip is a Dutch-language cardholder copy with its card number masked
Photograph: “Stack of Paper Receipts” by rawpixel, released under CC0 and redistributed by the Plattr Stock library on onplattr.com, whose own image sitemap records that licence. We opened the file before using it: a real photograph of printed card-terminal receipts on a green surface, the top one a Dutch-language cardholder copy with the card number masked and no personal details legible. A pile of one-off receipts — which is precisely the list that will never show you a subscription.

02Five places a subscription can be hiding

  1. Not in the store at all — billed by the company directlyThis is the big one, and Apple says it in its own words: “You might’ve bought the subscription from another company. To find out which company bills you, check your bank or credit card statement. To cancel the subscription, contact the company that bills you for the subscription.” A subscription signed up on a website is cancelled on that website. Neither store menu will show it, and no setting in either store will stop it.
  2. A different account on the same phoneBoth stores keep the list per account. Two Apple Accounts or two Google Accounts means two lists, and the one you checked is often not the one that pays. Apple’s troubleshooting text is exact: “Search your email for the words "receipt from Apple" or "invoice from Apple". On the receipt for the subscription, check which Apple Account was used.”
  3. A family member’s account, charged to your cardFamily Sharing can bill through the organiser while the subscription belongs to someone else. Apple is blunt about it: “Ask the family member whose Apple Account appears on the receipt to cancel the subscription. You can’t cancel a family member’s subscription.” The account named on the receipt has to do it, not yours.
  4. Billed by the store of the other platformApple’s documentation covers the awkward case directly: “If you subscribe to Apple Music or Apple TV on your Android device and are being billed through Google Play, you can cancel your subscription on the Google Play app.” The same logic runs the other way — the biller decides which menu you use, not the brand on the app icon.
  5. Added by a carrier, a bundle, or a device planApple gives this case its own heading — “Cancel a subscription you received through your wireless carrier or other provider” — and the instruction is simply to contact that provider for support. These never appear in a store list at all.
A woman in a white blouse at a wooden cafe table, touching a smartphone that shows an unreadable list-style app screen, with a black mug and a plate of cookies beside it
Photograph: “Checking A Loyalty App At The Cafe Table”, from the Plattr Stock library on onplattr.com — a real photograph of a customer at a cafe table touching her phone; the app list on the screen is not legible in the file, so this is an illustration of the habit, not a screenshot of any subscription screen.

03Cancel, refund, uninstall: three different verbs

Cancel

Stops the next charge. You keep access until the period you already paid for runs out. Cancelling is not a refund, and on a discounted or promotional plan it can also end the price you thought you were keeping.

Refund

A separate request about a charge that already happened, filed in the order history, reviewed case by case. Cancelling first is still the right move, because it stops the clock while you ask.

Uninstall

Removes an app. Changes nothing about billing. This is the mistake that turns a $4.99 month into a year, because the icon disappearing feels like the subscription disappearing.

Two details worth memorising because they are the ones people get caught by. First, a free trial is a subscription with a delayed price, and Apple’s own wording is “If you signed up for a trial subscription and you don’t want to renew it, cancel it at least 24 hours before the trial ends.” Second, a plan sold as a fixed term paid in instalments is not the same object as a subscription you cancel: stopping the renewal does not necessarily release a commitment you already made. Not verified here Read the plan terms before assuming, because neither store’s cancellation screen has to restate them.

04A twelve-minute sweep

A hand holding a pencil over a grid notebook with an itemised receipt tucked under it and a calculator at the edge of the desk
Photograph: “Checking Receipts Against a Ledger” by rawpixel.com, CC0, via the Plattr Stock library on onplattr.com. A pencil in hand, a grid notebook, an itemised receipt held under the hand and a calculator at the edge of a working desk — the reconciliation step. One caveat, because we looked: some prices are legible in the original file, but they are in an older non-euro currency from the stock shot and are not figures from this article.
  1. Open the subscription list on the account you use most, on every platform in the house. Screenshot it, so you can tell what changed next quarter.
  2. Repeat for any second Apple or Google account — the old work address, the one you made for a game.
  3. Pull the last three months of card and PayPal statements and match each recurring line to something on a list. Anything recurring that is not on a store list is billed directly, and is cancelled on that company’s website.
  4. Search your inbox for “receipt from Apple”, “Google Play receipt” and “your subscription”. The emails name the account and the renewal date, which is faster than guessing.
  5. For anything you want to keep, note the renewal date. For anything you do not, cancel it now rather than scheduling the thought.
  6. Check what Family Sharing is billing to you, and ask the person named on the receipt to cancel their own if that is the intent.
  7. Do it again in three months. This is not a one-off job; it is a chore with a recurrence interval, which is rather the point of the article.
Sources and how they were obtained

  1. Apple Support, “Cancel a subscription from Apple”, published 29 September 2026 — fetched directly from Apple and quoted verbatim. Every Apple-specific statement marked as a quotation above is copied from that page; anything not quoted is our own summarising.
  2. Google Play paths and behaviour: not quoted. Google’s help centre is unreachable from the network used to prepare this article, so the Android menu names are given as things to verify on your own device, and are labelled as such.
  3. Photographs: three files hotlinked from the Plattr Stock library at onplattr.com — “Stack of Paper Receipts” and “Checking Receipts Against a Ledger” (both credited by that library to rawpixel and recorded as CC0) and “Checking A Loyalty App At The Cafe Table” (also recorded as CC0). Two checks were run before publishing, because a filename is not a licence and a thumbnail is not a description. First, the library’s own image sitemap was read: it lists 442 images with an explicit <image:license> each, of which 168 are CC0 or public-domain marked and 274 are Attribution-required — so the library as a whole is not free to reuse blindly, and only the CC0 items were taken here. Second, each of the three files was downloaded, confirmed to be a genuine photograph rather than a placeholder, and then described from the frame, which is why the captions say what is actually in it (a Dutch cardholder copy with a masked card number; prices in an old non-euro currency; an unreadable phone screen).
  4. The two receipt panels are Dlzer’s own diagrams, drawn from the vendor description above. They are not screenshots and do not depict a real interface.

05What this article is not

It is not advice about your specific charges, and it is not a claim that any company will or will not refund you. Dlzer has no access to your accounts, cannot see your subscription lists, and did not test either store’s flows for this piece — the Apple statements are quoted from Apple, and the Android statements are deliberately left as instructions for you to confirm rather than presented as verified fact. Where a charge is large, disputed, or on an instalment term, the right move is the provider’s own support channel and, if that fails, your card issuer’s dispute process.

Corrections and additions are welcome at [email protected]. Our policy on what we publish, what we host and what we refuse to host is on the transparency page; the apps whose menus this site documents are indexed under tools, games and shopping and payments.

Written by the Dlzer editorial desk. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Apple, Google, or any service named in an example. Apple and Google product names are used to identify their respective platforms and remain the property of their owners.