The New York Times Cancellation Policy, Explained

The Times offers several subscription types — digital news, standalone products such as Games, Cooking, Audio, The Athletic, and Wirecutter, print Home Delivery, and bundles — and how you cancel depends on which you have and who bills you. According to the company's help center, many digital news-only subscriptions can be canceled online: sign in, open your account's Subscription Overview, find Manage Subscription, and select “Cancel your subscription,” then follow the prompts.

Other plans are handled differently. Print Home Delivery and bundled subscriptions generally cannot be ended with a single online click; the Times routes these to customer care, reachable by live chat or by phone at 1-866-273-3612 during limited Eastern-time hours, and chat and phone hours differ, so check the current help page. If you subscribed through the Apple App Store or Google Play, the Times cannot cancel for you — you must cancel through that store's subscription settings. In most cases access continues until the end of the billing period you have already paid for, and the Times generally does not refund the unused portion; confirm the final charge and last day of access when you cancel.

For years the Times exemplified a retention model that reporters and consumer advocates nicknamed “click to subscribe, call to cancel.” Signing up took seconds online, but leaving required reaching a person — first by phone, later by live chat — who would typically present discounts or a pause designed to keep you subscribed. As Nieman Lab documented in 2021, this “call to cancel” friction was one of the news industry's favorite retention tactics.

The Times has since made cancellation easier for at least some digital news subscribers by adding an online option, a change widely tied to regulatory and public pressure. Even so, reporting and the company's own help pages indicate that print and bundled customers may still be steered to chat or phone, where retention scripts remain part of the conversation. Those offers are optional; you can decline them and ask the representative to complete the cancellation.

In October 2021 the Federal Trade Commission issued an Enforcement Policy Statement Regarding Negative Option Marketing, paired with a press release titled “FTC to Ramp up Enforcement against Illegal Dark Patterns that Trick or Trap Consumers into Subscriptions.” The FTC's core principle is that businesses must provide a simple cancellation mechanism that is at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to sign up.

The statement specifically warns sellers not to, among other things, hang up on consumers who call to cancel, place them on hold for an unreasonably long time, provide false information about how to cancel, or misrepresent the reasons for delays in processing a cancellation. That guidance describes the exact friction long associated with newspaper subscriptions. The policy statement is guidance backed by existing law rather than a standalone rule, and it remains in effect.

The FTC later tried to turn those principles into a binding rule. On October 16, 2024, it finalized an amended Negative Option Rule — popularly called “click-to-cancel” — that would have required an easy, online way to end subscriptions that were started online, and prohibited making cancellation harder than sign-up.

That rule did not survive. On July 8, 2025, days before its compliance date, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the rule in its entirety on procedural grounds, finding the FTC had skipped a required preliminary regulatory analysis. The agency then restarted the process: on March 11, 2026, the FTC issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on negative-option marketing, opening a public comment period. As of mid-2026 there is no federal click-to-cancel rule in force. The operative federal framework is the 2021 enforcement policy statement, Section 5 of the FTC Act, and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA) — plus state automatic-renewal laws in California, New York, and elsewhere, which impose their own disclosure and easy-cancellation requirements.

The Times has also faced private litigation over how it discloses automatic renewal. Consumer-protection researchers at deceptive.design catalog a putative class action, Megan Perkins v. The New York Times Company, alleging the company did not clearly and conspicuously disclose auto-renewal terms before repeatedly charging a subscriber, in tension with a state automatic-renewal statute. These are allegations rather than findings; outcomes turn on the facts and jurisdiction, and case details evolve as litigation proceeds.

A few practical points, offered as general information and not legal advice. First, identify who actually bills you — the Times directly, Apple, or Google — because you can only cancel where the charge originates. Second, cancel through the channel your plan requires, and if you are routed to chat or phone you can politely decline retention offers and state clearly that you want to cancel. Third, ask for and save a written cancellation confirmation, and note the date of your final charge and your last day of access.

If you believe a cancellation was blocked, misrepresented, or ignored, you can document the interaction and consider contacting your state attorney general or the FTC, and reviewing your rights under any applicable state automatic-renewal law.