The short version
You enter a trial or subscription and its end date. TrialBell subtracts your safety margin to get a cancel-by date, schedules a lead reminder at 9:00 AM your chosen number of days before, and adds a time-sensitive alert on the deadline day itself. Tap the reminder, tap the cancellation link, done. Everything is computed and stored on your iPhone.
Step by step
Add it
Pick from 129 service templates or enter your own. Name, price, billing cycle and the date the trial ends or the subscription renews.
TrialBell does the math
It works out your cancel-by date and shows what you'll be charged if you do nothing, so the stakes are on screen rather than in your head.
Two reminders, not one
A lead reminder days ahead, and a final alert on the deadline day itself. The second one is the safety net for the day you ignored the first.
Cancel in one tap
The reminder carries the cancellation link. Tap it and you land on the provider's own cancellation page rather than hunting for it.
The cancel-by date
A renewal date is when the money leaves. A cancel-by date is your deadline to act — set deliberately earlier, because charges can post on the provider's clock rather than yours, cancellations sometimes take a moment to process, and the day you planned to deal with it is often the day everything else goes wrong.
TrialBell treats the cancel-by date as the thing being tracked. If you set one, every reminder is anchored to it rather than to the renewal date.
Exactly when reminders fire
This is worth being precise about, because "it reminds you" is the part every app claims and the details are what decide whether you actually catch the charge.
| Situation | What you get |
|---|---|
| A cancel-by date is set | A lead reminder at 9:00 AM local, your chosen number of days before — plus a final alert on the cancel-by day itself. |
| A trial with no cancel-by date | The same pair, anchored to the trial-end date: a lead reminder, then a final alert on the last day. |
| A plain renewal | One reminder at 9:00 AM local, at your chosen timing, repeating each billing cycle. |
Your timing options
Per subscription — not one global setting — you choose same day, 1 day before, 3 days before or 7 days before. Choosing "same day" collapses the lead into the final alert so you never get two notifications about the same deadline in one morning.
The final-day alert is the part that matters
On a cancel-by or trial-end day, the last reminder is marked time-sensitive, so iOS can surface it through most Focus modes. It normally fires at 9:00 AM, but if 9:00 AM has already passed — you added the subscription at lunchtime on its last safe day — it falls back to 6:00 PM so the day still ends with one alert. A lead reminder alone can be missed; this is the backstop.
Reminders are local notifications, scheduled by iOS on your device. Nothing is pushed from a server, which is why they work with no signal — and why TrialBell needs notification permission to be useful at all. Delivery still depends on your notification settings, Focus modes and whether the phone is on, so the app is a safety net rather than a guarantee.
What happens when you tap a cancellation link
The link opens in Safari, or in the service's own app if it claims that address. It leaves TrialBell — there's no in-app browser wrapping the page, and TrialBell has no visibility into what you do once you're there. It can't see whether you cancelled, so marking a subscription as cancelled is something you do yourself.
42 of the 129 templates ship with an official cancellation URL already filled in. For anything else you can paste your own link and it's saved with that subscription. We publish the full list, with the status of every URL, in our cancellation route audit.
Where everything is stored
On your iPhone, in TrialBell's own storage. There's no TrialBell account and no TrialBell server holding your subscriptions. Turn on iCloud Backup (a Pro feature) and your data is mirrored through Apple's iCloud key-value store into your iCloud account, which is how it reaches your other devices. The security and data page goes through this line by line.
What it can't do
- It can't find a subscription you never told it about — no bank feed, no email scanning.
- It can't cancel anything for you or negotiate a bill down.
- It can't know that a provider changed your price.
- It can't deliver a notification on a phone that's off, or through a Focus mode you've configured to block it.
Put your next renewal on a deadline
Add a trial in seconds, get the cancel-by date computed for you, and let the final-day alert catch what the first reminder missed. Free for 3 subscriptions; Pro is a one-time $19.99.
Coming soon to theApp StoreFrequently asked
What time do reminders arrive?
9:00 AM in your local time zone. The exception is the final alert on a cancel-by or trial-end day: if 9:00 AM has already gone by the time the reminder is scheduled, it falls back to 6:00 PM the same day.
Can I set different reminder timing for different subscriptions?
Yes. Timing is per subscription — same day, 1, 3 or 7 days before — and it's available on the free tier, not gated behind Pro.
Does TrialBell need an internet connection?
No. Reminders are scheduled locally by iOS and your data is on the device. You only need a connection to open a cancellation page or to sync iCloud Backup.
Does it cancel subscriptions for me?
No. It reminds you in time and opens the provider's cancellation page in one tap, but you complete the cancellation yourself. TrialBell never has access to your accounts.