Open banking is everywhere. If you've searched for a subscription tracker in the UK recently, you've probably noticed that most of them want access to your bank account within the first 30 seconds. It's become the default approach — connect your bank, let the app scan your transactions, and sit back while it builds your subscription list automatically.
It's clever. It's convenient. And for some people, it's exactly the right solution.
But "available" doesn't always mean "necessary". Open banking is a powerful technology that solves a genuine problem — but it also introduces trade-offs that most subscription trackers don't talk about. Before you hand over your banking credentials, it's worth understanding what you're actually agreeing to, what you get in return, and whether you need any of it.
What open banking is good at
Let's start with the genuine advantages, because they're real.
Automatic discovery
The biggest selling point of open banking subscription trackers is automatic detection. Connect your bank, and the app scans your transaction history for recurring payments. Netflix, Spotify, your gym membership, that magazine subscription you forgot about two years ago — they all show up without you typing a thing.
For someone who genuinely has no idea what they're paying for, this can be revelatory. It's the digital equivalent of tipping out a drawer and seeing everything at once.
Low effort setup
There's no denying that connecting a bank account and waiting 30 seconds is easier than manually adding subscriptions one by one. If speed of setup is your primary concern, open banking delivers.
Catching forgotten subscriptions
Some subscriptions are genuinely hard to spot. A £1.99 monthly charge from a service you signed up for in 2021 isn't going to jump out of a bank statement. Open banking tools are good at surfacing these because they analyse patterns, not just amounts you remember.
Open banking isn't a bad technology. It's regulated by the FCA in the UK, uses secure APIs, and the providers who offer it are held to standards. The question isn't whether it's safe in isolation — it's whether you need it for this particular job.
Where open banking falls short
Here's where it gets more nuanced. Open banking solves the discovery problem well, but it introduces other problems that are easy to overlook.
Over-collection of data
When you connect your bank account to a subscription tracker, the app doesn't just see your subscriptions. It sees your transactions. Your salary. Your rent or mortgage. Where you shop. How often you eat out. What you spend on transport.
Most open banking providers request read access to your full transaction history — not because they need all of it, but because subscription detection requires scanning everything to find the recurring patterns. The app is looking for a needle, but it needs the entire haystack to find it.
To put it concretely: to find your £9.99 Netflix subscription, an open banking app may also see your salary, rent, grocery shopping, and travel habits. That's a significant amount of personal financial data in the hands of a third party, for the purpose of finding a dozen or so recurring charges. The maths on that trade-off is worth thinking about.
Ongoing access
Open banking connections aren't one-time snapshots. To keep your subscription list up to date, the app needs ongoing read access to your account. New subscriptions are detected by monitoring new recurring transactions — which means your bank data continues to flow to a third party for as long as the connection is active.
You can revoke access at any time, and you should review your open banking connections periodically. But the default state is continuous access, and most people set it up once and never think about it again.
False positives and missed context
Automatic detection sounds perfect until you realise that algorithms can't always tell the difference between a subscription and a regular payment. Your weekly Tesco shop? Recurring. Your monthly standing order to a friend? Recurring. The direct debit to your landlord? Definitely recurring.
Open banking tools can misidentify regular payments as subscriptions, and miss actual subscriptions that are billed irregularly or through intermediaries. The result is a list that needs manual cleanup anyway — which somewhat undermines the "automatic" selling point.
The assumption that automation is always better
There's a broader assumption at play here: that the best version of any tool is the most automated one. More data, less effort, maximum convenience. It's a reasonable instinct, and it drives most product development in fintech.
But convenience and control exist on a spectrum. The more you automate, the less you engage with the process. And for something like subscription management — where the whole point is to make informed decisions about what you're paying for — there's a strong argument that some engagement is valuable.
Passive users vs informed users
An open banking tracker says: "We'll find everything for you." That's helpful, but it creates a passive relationship. The app knows your subscriptions; you glance at the list occasionally.
A manual tracker says: "Tell us what you're paying for." That requires five minutes of effort, but the act of adding each subscription forces you to think about it. What am I paying? When does it renew? Do I actually use this? That engagement is where the real value lives — not in the list itself, but in the process of building it.
The people who get the most from subscription tracking aren't the ones with the longest lists. They're the ones who've actively thought about each item on their list. That happens more naturally when you add things yourself.
Put simply: open banking optimises for discovery; manual tracking optimises for understanding. Both have value — but only one of them helps you make better decisions next month.
When open banking might make sense
None of this means open banking is wrong. There are situations where it's genuinely the better choice:
Complex finances
If you have subscriptions across multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and payment methods, manually tracking all of them can be genuinely difficult. Open banking can consolidate everything in one place.
Business accounts
For small business owners managing dozens of SaaS subscriptions, team accounts, and software licences, the volume alone can justify automation. The data privacy calculus is different for a business account than a personal one.
Users who explicitly want it
Some people are comfortable sharing financial data with third parties, understand the trade-offs, and prefer the convenience. That's a perfectly valid choice. The issue isn't with open banking itself — it's with apps that present it as the only option, or that downplay the data implications.
If you've used open banking before, it's worth reviewing your active connections. On most UK banking apps, you can find these under Settings > Connected Apps or Third-party Access. Revoke anything you no longer use.
Why SubSorted chose not to use open banking
SubSorted is a subscription tracker that doesn't connect to your bank. This wasn't an oversight or a technical limitation — it was a deliberate product decision, and it shapes everything about how the app works.
Clear scope
SubSorted exists to do one thing: remind you before subscriptions renew so you can decide what to do. That job doesn't require access to your bank account. It requires knowing what you're subscribed to, when it renews, and how much it costs. You already know all of that — SubSorted just gives you a simple way to record it and be reminded at the right time.
Less risk
By not accessing your bank, SubSorted eliminates an entire category of risk. There are no banking credentials to protect, no transaction data to store, no third-party connections to monitor, and no financial data that could be leaked. The app can't lose data it never had. For a deeper look at this approach, see our guide on how SubSorted works and why it doesn't use your bank.
More trust
Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Asking for bank access on first launch — before a user has seen any value — is a significant ask. Many people simply won't do it. SubSorted takes a different approach: you download the app, add a subscription, and see value immediately. No permissions, no accounts, no data sharing required. Trust is built through use, not demanded upfront.
This approach means SubSorted won't automatically discover forgotten subscriptions for you. If that's a dealbreaker, an open banking tool might be a better fit. But for most people — people who broadly know what they're paying for and just want to stay on top of renewal dates — manual entry takes a few minutes and gives you a list you understand, own, and control.
If you're curious about the practical side, we've written about how to track your subscriptions without sharing bank details.
Open banking is a tool — not a requirement
Open banking is a powerful piece of technology. It's well-regulated in the UK, it solves real problems, and it has transformed how people interact with their finances. None of that is in question.
But it's a tool. Like any tool, it's right for some jobs and wrong for others. The question isn't "is open banking good?" — it's "do I need open banking for this particular thing?"
For subscription tracking, the answer depends on your situation. If you have complex finances, multiple accounts, and genuinely no idea what you're subscribed to, open banking can help you get started. If you broadly know your subscriptions and want a simple, private way to stay on top of renewal dates, you probably don't need it.
The best subscription tracker isn't the most automated one. It's the one that helps you make better decisions about what you're paying for. Sometimes that means less technology, not more.