What's the Difference Between Unsubscribe and Cancel?

The everyday meaning of "unsubscribe" is the link at the bottom of a marketing email. Under the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, senders must honor that opt-out, but it only stops emails, it has no effect on money you're being charged. "Cancel" is the separate action that ends a subscription and stops the next renewal.

Where you cancel depends on who takes the payment. If you subscribed through an iPhone, cancel in Settings > [your name] > Subscriptions; through Android, in the Play Store under Subscriptions; if the company charges your card directly, cancel in your online account. Deleting or uninstalling the app does not cancel anything, the subscription lives with the billing platform, not the app on your phone.

Canceling stops future charges but usually leaves your access in place until the end of the period you already paid for, and most monthly plans aren't prorated or refunded for the unused days. Letting a card expire is not a reliable way to stop charges, because card networks run account-updater services that pass your new card number to merchants. And a chargeback, disputing a charge with your bank, is not the same as canceling, the subscription can stay active and bill again.

Canceling an ordinary subscription does not affect your credit score. The narrow exception is a contract like a gym membership: if you stop paying but never properly cancel, an unpaid balance can be sent to collections and reported. On ease of canceling, the FTC's 2024 "click-to-cancel" rule was vacated by a federal appeals court in 2025, but the agency's long-standing authority over deceptive negative-option billing still applies, and many states have their own easy-cancel laws.