Frequently asked

Click "Add subscription" on the dashboard. Fill in vendor, plan, cost, billing cycle, renewal date, and assign an owner. That's all five fields. You can edit any of it later — the goal is getting the entry in the ledger, not making it perfect on the first pass.

Not with a one-click importer, deliberately. Most spreadsheets have inconsistent data (stale entries, wrong categories, missing owners), and auto-import would bring the mess with it. What works: email your CSV to [email protected] and we'll help you migrate in one session — or paste each row manually, which is the right forcing function to sanity-check the list as you go.

Under an hour for a 20-subscription ledger. Most teams finish 20 entries in about 15 minutes of entry time; the rest is setting budget ceilings and inviting teammates.

No. CostLens never asks for bank access, card feeds, Gmail, or SSO. You enter each subscription yourself. The ledger contains exactly what you put in it.

The Free plan covers 3 subscriptions and gives you a feel for the tool. Pro doesn't have a separate free trial — Free is the trial. If you add a 4th subscription, the form prompts you to upgrade or delete one of the first three.

For annual subscriptions, CostLens emails the assigned owner at 30, 15, 7, and 1 days before each renewal. For monthly subs, a single reminder fires 3 days before the next charge. If you need different windows per subscription, email [email protected] — per-sub customization is a roadmap item.

CostLens flags two or more subscriptions in the same category with similar vendor names. Example: "Notion · Team" at one billing email and "Notion · Plus" at another email both fall into the Productivity category and trigger a duplicate flag. You review each flag and decide whether it's a legitimate duplicate or two tools doing genuinely different jobs.

Built-in categories cover Design, Engineering, Infrastructure, Productivity, Comms, Finance, Marketing, Ops, AI Tooling, and a few more. You can't add custom categories today — the constrained list is intentional, to keep the taxonomy consistent across workspaces.

Set a monthly ceiling per category (say $2k for Engineering). When the category's total spend for the month crosses 80% of the ceiling, you get an email. When it crosses 100%, another email. Thresholds are configurable per category.

You can enter subscriptions in their native currency (USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, JPY, and more). CostLens displays each in its native currency and does not run live FX conversion — if you need a normalized total across currencies, CSV export and let your accounting tool handle it.

Yes. Upgrades take effect immediately. Downgrades keep you on Pro until the end of the current billing cycle, then drop you to Free without deleting anything.

Billing settings page, or through the Stripe billing portal linked from there. You keep Pro access through the end of the current cycle. No confirmation calls, no "are you sure" loops.

Your data stays. On Free, the oldest 3 subscriptions remain active in the dashboard and the rest are hidden until you upgrade again. Nothing gets deleted. If you fully delete your account (a separate action), you get a confirmation email before the data goes.

If you upgrade to Pro and regret it within 14 days, email [email protected] for a full refund. No hoops, no "what happened" questionnaire. After 14 days it's a pro-rated conversation, but still honest.

Not formally. If you're running a nonprofit or you're on a student budget, email [email protected] and we'll sort something out.

Stripe handles billing. Cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay through Stripe Checkout. No invoicing yet — if you need it for a team purchase, email us.

Up to 3 workspace members. Usually the founder, the finance lead, and maybe one ops person. If you need more seats, email [email protected] — we've set up teams with more as needed.

Organization settings page, invite by email. They get a link, accept, and land in the workspace. No SSO requirement, no admin approval flow.

Every member can view and edit the subscription ledger, set budget ceilings, receive renewal alerts for subs they own, and run CSV exports. There's no granular permission system today — if you need "viewer-only" roles, let us know.

Remove them from the workspace via Organization settings. Reassign any subscriptions they owned to another member (otherwise those subs keep sending alerts to a dead inbox). The tool will prompt you to reassign when you remove them.

Whatever you enter into the ledger (vendors, costs, renewal dates, owner names). Your account profile (name, email). Billing info handled by Stripe, never stored on our end. No bank data, no card feed, no inbox contents, no SSO tokens.

Yes — one-click CSV export on Pro, covers every subscription with all metadata. Free plan users can contact support for an export.

EU data centers. Forge (our hosting layer) runs on AWS in an EU region. If data residency in a specific country matters for your compliance posture, email and we'll give you the details.

Yes. Privacy policy at /privacy covers the full data flow; it's short and readable. Email [email protected] if you need a DPA for your own compliance paperwork.

If your subscription count passes 100 or so, or if you need virtual cards for SaaS purchases, or if your team starts running formal procurement workflows. The comparison page covers Cledara, Substly, and Sastrify with honest read on when each is the better fit.

Not yet. What most teams use in place: the CSV export (on Pro) plus a scheduled reminder to refresh it for whatever downstream dashboard they care about. If a proper API matters to your use case, tell us; we're tracking interest.

Different shapes of tool for different team sizes. Cledara does virtual cards and auto-discovery for startups through scaleups. Substly is automated tracking for SMBs. Sastrify is procurement-as-a-service for 200+ person teams. CostLens is manual entry for the 10-30 person team where one finance lead already knows what they pay for. The /compare page has the full side-by-side.