How to manage subscriptions in multiple currencies
Expats, travellers, remote workers, and most Europeans end up with subscriptions in two or three currencies. The cost in your home currency drifts with FX — and most trackers either don't show it or show it stale. This guide is about doing it properly.
Why the home-currency total moves
A $20 ChatGPT Plus is $20 in dollars, but in your home currency it's whatever your card issuer's FX rate happens to be on the billing day — plus any FX margin the card adds.
Across 10 subscriptions in three currencies, that drift compounds. A 3% currency move on €100 of monthly subs is €3/month — €36/year — that nobody's tracking.
Pick one base currency and live in it
The hardest part of multi-currency tracking is decision fatigue. Pick one base currency — your home currency, usually — and treat every total in that currency as the source of truth.
SubRemind enforces this: every subscription is stored in its native currency, but the dashboard always shows totals in your chosen base. Switch base currency once and every chart, total, and projection redraws.
Use live FX rates, not a snapshot
A rate you typed in once will be wrong within weeks. Use a tracker that updates rates automatically — SubRemind refreshes every hour from open.er-api.com.
If you're DIY-ing this in a spreadsheet, Google Sheets' GOOGLEFINANCE function returns live rates. Refresh the sheet on the first of every month to keep it honest.
Watch the card's FX margin separately
The FX rate you see in a tracker is the mid-market rate. The rate your card uses is usually 1–3% worse. That's a fixed tax on every foreign-currency subscription.
For high-volume foreign subs (e.g. lots of USD AI tools while based in Europe), a Wise / Revolut card with mid-market FX can save €5–€15/month vs a standard bank card. Track the savings the same way.
Frequently asked
Which base currencies does SubRemind support?
USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, JPY, CAD, AUD, INR, and more. Pick whichever is your home currency and every subscription in any other currency will convert to it automatically.
What if the FX API is temporarily down?
SubRemind falls back to showing the native price for that subscription (e.g. "$20" instead of the converted amount). Totals still show with the latest rate cached at the previous successful refresh. You won't get a wrong number, just an occasionally older one.
Should I track each subscription in my home currency or the merchant currency?
Always the merchant currency — that's the amount that's actually billed. The tracker converts on display. Storing it in your home currency means every FX move bakes a stale number into your dashboard.
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