A Subscription Tracker That Works on iPhone and Android

Here's a problem the subscription tracker round-ups never mention: most of the good apps only run on half the phones. If you have an iPhone and your partner has a Pixel, the polished, well-reviewed tracker everyone recommends is a tracker only one of you can open. And since household subscriptions are exactly the ones that get double-paid and forgotten, the app can't help with the case that needs it most. A subscription tracker that works on iPhone and Android at the same time is rarer than it should be, and it's worth understanding why.

The Category Is Split Down the Middle

This isn't a coincidence or an oversight — it's the shape of the whole market.

Bobby, probably the best-loved subscription tracker there is, is iPhone only. Its website offers a single App Store badge and no Google Play link at all. It's a beautiful app, it's actively maintained, and if you're on Android it may as well not exist.

Subby is the mirror image: a well-regarded Android tracker, distributed through Google Play, with no iPhone counterpart.

And a whole cluster of the nicest-looking trackers are Apple-only by design, syncing through iCloud. iCloud sync is genuinely excellent — right up until the moment it needs to reach a device that isn't Apple's, which it will never do.

So the market gives you two good options and a hard requirement that your entire household picks the same side. That's a strange thing to demand of people who are just trying to remember when Disney+ renews.

Why Mixed-Device Households Get Hit Hardest

The irony is that these are precisely the households with the messiest subscriptions.

• Shared subscriptions get double-bought. One of you signs up for a family plan; the other doesn't know and starts their own. Nobody finds out for a year.
• Charges split across two app stores. Some subscriptions bill through Apple, some through Google. Neither store shows you the other's, so App Store subscriptions hide easily — and in a mixed household, they hide twice over.
• The person tracking isn't always the person paying. If only one of you can open the app, the list is only ever half true.

A tracker that one partner can't open isn't a shared tracker. It's a private list with extra steps.

The Fix: Skip the App Store Entirely

The reason trackers are platform-locked is that they're native apps, built with one platform's toolkit and shipped through one platform's store. Sync gets solved with that platform's cloud, which is why it stops at the platform's edge.

Subgrove sidesteps this by being a web app you install to your home screen — a PWA. There's no App Store version and no Play Store version, because there's one version and it runs in the browser every phone already has. In practice:

• Both of you install the same thing. iPhone, Android, laptop, tablet, work desktop. It's the same app, and it looks and behaves the same on all of them.
• Nobody has to switch phones to be included in the household's subscription list.
• It updates for everyone at once. No waiting on app review, no "have you updated yet?"
• It still works offline. Installed to your home screen, it opens and works without a connection — more on how that works.

For tracking a family's or a couple's subscriptions, that's not a nice-to-have. It's the difference between the tool working and the tool not applying to you.

The Honest Trade-Offs

A PWA is not better than a native app at everything, and it's worth being straight about that.

If your household is all-Apple, a native app with iCloud sync is a genuinely great choice, and apps like Bobby are lovely. We'd rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. Our advantage here is specifically about crossing platforms — if you never need to cross one, it isn't an advantage at all.

Installing a PWA is also a slightly less familiar move than tapping "Get" in a store: on iPhone it's Share → Add to Home Screen; on Android, Chrome offers to install it. It takes about ten seconds, but it is ten seconds of unfamiliarity.

And, as with any manual tracker, you type your subscriptions in — there's no bank connection reading them off your statement. That's the deliberate trade, not an omission.

Getting Both of You Set Up

Add each subscription with its price, cycle and next renewal date, and set reminders per subscription. If you're not sure the list is complete, do a proper sweep first — bank statements, email searches, and both app stores' subscription pages.

Sign up on whichever phone you happen to be holding. The free plan covers your first five subscriptions, and the person with the other kind of phone can open the exact same app.