How Much Do Australians Actually Spend on Subscriptions?

The average Australian household now spends $78 per month on digital entertainment subscriptions alone. That's up 24% from a year ago, according to Deloitte's 2025 Media & Entertainment Consumer Insights report. And that figure doesn't include gym memberships, software, news paywalls, cloud storage, or food delivery passes.

The total is higher than most people think. And a significant chunk of it goes to services they've forgotten about entirely.

Where the money goes

Australia's subscription entertainment market hit 54.6 million active services in the year to June 2025, according to the Telsyte Australian Subscription Entertainment Study. That's across a population of 26 million. The maths is simple: Australians are stacking subscriptions.

Streaming video is the biggest category. Households that pay for streaming now hold an average of 3.7 video subscriptions, up from 2.3 in 2021, per the Deloitte report. The average monthly spend on video streaming alone has reached $42, according to Telsyte. Netflix leads with 6.4 million Australian subscribers, followed by Amazon Prime Video (5.1 million), Disney+ (3.3 million), Stan (2.6 million), Paramount+ (2.1 million), Kayo Sports (1.7 million), and Binge (1.6 million).

If you subscribed to every video streaming platform available in Australia on its cheapest plan, you'd pay $215.87 per month. On the top-tier plans, that figure hits $307.87, according to a Pedestrian.TV breakdown.

Music streaming accounts for 19 million subscriptions nationally, growing 6% year-on-year. A Spotify Premium individual plan now costs $15.99/month. Apple Music is $12.99/month.

Gaming subscriptions are the fastest-growing category, up 7% to 9.7 million subscriptions. PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass, and Nintendo Switch Online all operate on recurring billing.

Sports streaming is its own cost centre. Kayo starts at $30/month. Fifty-seven per cent of Australian sports fans are now willing to pay for sports content, spending an average of $22/month, up from $20 in 2024, per Deloitte.

Then there's everything else: Adobe Creative Cloud ($22.99-$86.99/month), Microsoft 365 ($109/year), ChatGPT Plus ($30/month), gym memberships ($15-$80/month), news paywalls (SMH, The Australian, AFR), cloud storage (iCloud, Google One), food delivery passes (Uber One, DoorDash), and VPNs. These rarely appear in the headline figures but add up fast.

The forgotten subscriptions problem

An ING Australia survey (conducted by YouGov with 1,075 respondents) found that Australians could save an average of $1,261 per year by cutting subscriptions and recurring payments they've forgotten about or don't use. The national total: over $8 billion wasted.

The numbers behind that figure are bleak. Thirty-nine per cent of Australians admit they have scheduled payments they've forgotten about or for services they no longer use. A quarter don't even know what all their recurring charges are. And it takes the average Australian nine months to get around to cancelling an unused service, costing $964 in the meantime.

Compare the Market research (using ME Bank data) paints a similar picture: 48% of Australians have entirely forgotten about certain subscriptions they're paying for. Thirty-four per cent pay for services they never use. The average wastage sits around $200 per year, but for Australians aged 34 to 54, it climbs to $570.

The most common reason? Half of respondents said they kept paying because they "might need it later." Thirty-one per cent simply forgot. Twenty-one per cent couldn't be bothered cancelling.

That last one is by design.

The invisible creep

Subscription costs don't stay where you left them. They creep up, usually by $1 or $2 at a time, spaced out so you barely notice.

Netflix has raised its Australian prices six times since launching in 2015. Its Premium plan started at $14.99/month. It's now $28.99. That's a 93% increase over ten years, according to Reviews.org. The cheapest ad-free plan (Standard) is $20.99, up from $11.99 at launch.

Spotify held its price steady for years, then raised Australian individual plans to $15.99/month in August 2025, with family plans jumping to $27.99. Disney+ nearly doubled its standard plan to $15.99/month. Stan, Binge, Paramount+, and Apple TV+ have all pushed through increases.

The compound effect is what hurts. If you had five streaming services three years ago at roughly $10 each ($50/month), those same five services now cost closer to $80/month after successive price rises. That's an extra $360 per year for the same content, before you've added any new subscriptions.

And 78% of Australians say they're worried about the total cost of their subscriptions, according to the Deloitte report. Yet 65% feel they need multiple subscriptions to access the content they want. That tension is the subscription economy's business model.

Cancelling is hard on purpose

A 2024 report from the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC), surveying 2,000 Australians, found that 76% had experienced difficulty cancelling an online subscription. Forty-five per cent spent more time than they intended trying to cancel. Thirty-two per cent felt pressured into keeping a subscription. Ten per cent gave up entirely.

Services use what the CPRC calls "subscription traps": hiding the cancel button, requiring phone calls during business hours, forcing users through multi-step retention flows, or making signing up a one-click process while cancelling requires navigating five screens and a guilt trip.

The result: even when Australians decide to cut back, the friction keeps them paying. Ninety per cent of survey respondents said they'd be more likely to return to a service if cancelling were quick and simple. Companies know this. They've done the maths. Making it hard to leave is more profitable than making it easy to stay.

How Australia compares

Australians pay more for many of the same services available overseas. Netflix Premium in Australia ($28.99 AUD) costs more than its US equivalent when adjusted for exchange rates. This "Australia tax" extends across software, gaming, and digital services, a pricing discrepancy well-documented since a 2013 parliamentary inquiry.

Globally, the pattern is similar but the spending is lower. Deloitte's figures show Australian households at 3.7 video subscriptions, compared to roughly 3 in the US and 2.5 in the UK. The combination of higher per-service pricing and high subscription counts puts Australian households near the top of global per-capita subscription spending.

What to actually do about it

The fix is boring and effective.

1. Check your bank statement. Look at the last three months. Flag every recurring charge. Most people find charges they don't recognise or forgot about.

2. Cancel what you don't use. If you haven't opened a streaming app in the last month, cancel it. You can always resubscribe. Most services let you pick up where you left off.

3. Track what you keep. Know exactly what you're paying, when each charge hits, and what the annual total is. The number is almost always higher than people expect.

4. Rotate, don't stack. You don't need five streaming services running simultaneously. Subscribe to one for a month, watch what you want, cancel, move to the next. The content will still be there.

5. Check for price increases. Services rarely notify you prominently. Review your subscription costs every few months.

The subscription model depends on inertia. The less attention you pay, the more you spend. The numbers show most Australians are paying for things they don't use, don't want, or didn't realise had gotten more expensive. The only counter is paying attention.