Auto-renewal · Free checker
Free auto-renewal & click-to-cancel checker
Complidar's free auto-renewal checker walks your subscription and cancellation flows with a real browser and reads them the way an FTC investigator would: is the recurring charge disclosed clearly before you take billing details, is consent affirmative, and is there a real way out? You get the gaps, the dark patterns, and an estimated liability range in minutes, no account and no card. Enter a domain you own or are authorized to test and the scan starts.
What the checker reads, and what it can't
The mechanical failures are visible from outside, which is exactly why they are scannable. The checker confirms whether the recurring price and billing interval appear clear-and-conspicuously before the payment step, whether consent to the recurring charge is a deliberate act rather than a pre-checked auto-renew box, and whether a simple online cancellation path exists or signup that took ninety seconds dead-ends into a phone line or a business-hours chat. It also reads the cancel flow itself for retention walls, confirm-shaming, and buried links, and checks the terms-of-service auto-renewal clause against what checkout actually shows.
It cannot see your billing backend. Whether a submitted cancellation actually stops the charges, whether refunds issue, and how your retention team behaves on the phone are records questions a scan does not settle. Complidar reports what is mechanically detectable on the public site and marks what needs a person, so a clean automated pass never reads as full compliance. The checker is the first pass, not legal advice, and it never replaces counsel.
The laws behind the check, and why scan first
Three regimes converge here. ROSCA, the federal Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (15 U.S.C. § 8401), requires clear disclosure of recurring terms, express consent, and simple cancellation for anything sold online with a negative-option feature. California's Automatic Renewal Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17602) is the strictest and most litigated, and many other states have their own auto-renewal statutes that reach you wherever your subscribers live. The FTC's Click-to-Cancel rule pushed the same idea before it was vacated in 2025: getting out should be as easy as getting in. The narrative anchor for cancel-flow enforcement is U.S. v. Adobe ($150M DOJ settlement, 2026), a case built on a cancellation flow designed to obstruct.
Plaintiff firms and regulators build these cases from screenshots of the exact surfaces this checker reads. Running it yourself means you see those screenshots before they do, and can fix the cheapest, most-cited gaps, an unbuttoned disclosure or a phone-only cancel path, before a demand letter arrives priced just below the cost of calling a lawyer.
What this checker looks for
- Recurring-charge terms disclosed clear-and-conspicuously before billing information is collected
- Affirmative consent to the recurring charge, with no pre-checked auto-renew box
- A simple online, self-serve cancellation path rather than phone-only or in-person-only
- Dark patterns in the cancel flow: retention walls, confirm-shaming, and buried links
- Trial-conversion terms stated where the trial is offered, not after billing starts
- The terms-of-service auto-renewal clause checked against what checkout actually shows
Common questions
Is the click-to-cancel requirement still real?
The hard requirements come from statute, not just the FTC rule. ROSCA has demanded simple online cancellation since 2010, and California's Automatic Renewal Law and other state auto-renewal statutes apply wherever your subscribers live. U.S. v. Adobe ($150M settlement, 2026) shows obstructive cancel flows still get enforced. The checker reads your pages against those standards regardless of the rule's status.
My subscriptions run through a billing provider. Doesn't that cover me?
Your processor handles the billing mechanics; ROSCA and the state auto-renewal laws regulate what your pages say and how your flows behave. Disclosure placement, the consent box, and the cancel path are your site's responsibility, not your provider's. The scan reads those pages, which is exactly where the violations live, and what plaintiffs screenshot.
What does an auto-renewal violation actually cost?
Comparable cancellation-method cases cluster around a category median near $10M. To show the scale enforcement can reach: FTC v. Epic/Fortnite ran to $245M, FTC v. Vonage $100M, and FTC v. AT&T $60M. For a small business the realistic exposure is a state-law demand letter or AG inquiry, cheaper, but built from the same screenshots the checker would have shown you first.
Last updated 2026-06-28 · Informational, not legal advice: how to read this