Skip to main content

The average American spends $857 on monthly subscriptions (infographic)

Join us in Atlanta on April 10th and explore the landscape of security workforce. We will explore the vision, benefits, and use cases of AI for security teams. Request an invite here.


empty-walletSubscription revenue is the new old thing, apparently.

Flickr — remember Flickr? — charges $6.95 a month to share your photos to the world, if you want pro functionality. Buffer, the social media sharing and analytics company, charges $10/month for anything beyond the freemium crumbs. And Dropbox goes from $10-50/month, just at the consumer level.

But subscription revenue has been around a lot longer than even the oldest dot-com. Aria Systems, a software-as-a-service billings platform, put together an infographic with all the subscriptions that the average American — you know, the person who lives next door and just got an Android phone — pays every month.

It’s a massive $857/month … mostly because of items that we don’t typically think of as subscription payments, but actually are. Things like insurance, a mobile phone plan, and utilities. Even the biggest one of all: health care.

Over time, startups can only hope that some of this revenue, most of which is dumped into the laps of massive contenders in yesterday’s economy, will come their way.

Here’s the visual data:

Recurring revenue stats infographic

VB Daily - get the latest in your inbox

Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here.

An error occured.