What subscriptions cost a Singaporean in a year

Most articles about subscription spending open with a number nobody can trace. This one uses a single figure from somebody else's research, says whose it is, and then does arithmetic you can redo on the back of an envelope.

The one figure that is not ours

Finder puts the average Singaporean's subscription spending at S$57.69 a month. Per person rather than per household, and the survey is undated, which is why beemate quotes it as Finder's and not as a finding of its own. At that rate a year costs S$692.28.

If a figure on any site is not attributed to somebody who measured it, treat it as decoration. That includes ours.

Where the money actually goes

The interesting part is not the total, it is the shape. Subscriptions are sold in two forms: one price for one person, or one price for a plan that holds several. The second kind charges you for every place on it whether or not anybody is there.

A plan for six used by two people is not a good deal that happens to be underused. It is four seats being paid for at full price, every month, forever.

The arithmetic, done once

Take a household paying for nine seats across its plans — a six-seat plan and a three-seat plan is exactly that — and sitting in three of them. Six seats are empty. If those six are filled by people paying their share, the household recovers six ninths of what it pays, less what a platform takes.

beemate's recurring fee is 6% of the seat price, so six ninths of the bill, less 6%, is 62% of it. Against Finder's S$692.28 a year that is S$433.83 back. The landing page shows that figure and this is its derivation: one measured input, one stated assumption about the household, one published rate.

Change the assumption and the figure changes. A household sitting in six of nine seats recovers a third of the bill, not two thirds. Nobody's subscriptions look like the average, which is why the number is shown with the assumption attached rather than as a promise.

What it costs to be on the other side

Taking a seat rather than owning the plan: you pay the seat price — the plan divided by its seats — plus beemate's service fee of 25% of that, capped at S$2. The cap is what makes the fee small on anything above S$8 a seat. The fees page works two examples through end to end.

The honest summary

Sharing a plan does not make subscriptions cheap. It makes you stop paying for places nobody is sitting in, which is a smaller and more defensible claim than the ones this market usually makes.

Before acting on any of it, check what the provider allows: which subscriptions can you share goes through the terms, and two of the best-known plans say no.