Trial Guard

That ONE free trial and subscription tracker you need so you NEVER get debited after your free trial or subscription ends

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Inspiration

The inspiration for Trial Guard came from a painful personal experience. I had signed up for a 14-day free trial of an Adobe PDF app to complete a quick task. Because I did not have a card for online payments at the time, I borrowed my brother's card, assuring him he wouldn't be charged. I used the app once, uninstalled it that same day, and completely forgot about it

Two weeks later, my brother called me, he had been debited almost $30, He was broke at the time, and I felt terrible. I ended up having to refund him out of my own pocket. Since that day, I wished I had a simple tool that would just remind me a day or two before a trial ended, That $30 mistake was the spark that led to Trial Guard

What it does

Trial Guard is a personal finance protection tool designed for everyday consumers who sign up for free trials and recurring subscriptions across various online services Its core mission "Track. Remind. Cancel." solves a universal problem: forgetting to cancel free trials or subscriptions before they auto-renew, leading to unexpected charges, as well as regular subscriptions

The product requires no sign-up or account creation. All data is stored locally on the user's device via browser localStorage, ensuring complete privacy. Users add their subscriptions and free trials, monitor live financial metrics (guaranteed monthly spend vs at-risk trial capital), receive urgent alerts when trials are about to convert to paid plans, and can download calendar reminders (.ics files) to get notified before renewal deadlines, For popular services like Netflix, Spotify, Adobe, and GitHub, Trial Guard even provides direct cancellation links to more than 30 provider's billing page

How we built it

Trial Guard is built as a single-page application with a striking neo-brutalist visual design, The architecture was chosen for simplicity and immediacy and uniqueness, there's no onboarding friction and no authentication required. I heavily utilized "vibe coding" alongside my foundational programming knowledge to rapidly prototype and build out the logic, The entire application relies on client-side browser storage to maintain the zero-data-collection, privacy-first promise, and it is deployed directly through GitHub

Challenges we ran into

  • Curating Cancellation Links: The most tedious obstacle was sourcing the direct cancellation and billing URLs for dozens of different subscription services. I had to manually hunt down the exact links for almost every popular service one by one to ensure users could cancel with a single click.
  • Producing the Demo Video: I initially had no idea how to create a compelling two-minute app demo. I had to ask around on discord, watch numerous YouTube tutorials, and learn video editing on the fly to get the transitions and zooms exactly right

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am incredibly proud that I built this entirely from scratch in less than a week, and managed to get it running with absolutely zero errors. This was my first time stepping outside of theoretical coursework to build a standalone project entirely on my own, I didn't borrow anyone else's idea, I identified a real problem and coded the solution, Just seeing it work flawlessly is a massive personal accomplishment

What we learned

Building Trial Guard bridged the gap between theoretical concepts and practical application As a 200-level Computer Science student, I had been taught Object-Oriented Programming and concepts like public class in Java, but I hadn't fully grasped how those concepts translated to real-world web deployment

When I needed to add a favicon and website title, I realized I had to create a public folder in my GitHub repository and link it to my HTML file. It was a massive "wow" moment, seeing firsthand why a folder must be designated as public so other files can access those assets. Beyond the code, I also learned foundational video editing skills zooming, pacing, and transitions, which I will definitely carry forward into future projects

What's next for Trial Guard

My immediate next step is gathering real-world feedback. I plan to leverage my network of over 2,500 followers on X to beta test the application. Once I collect their feedback on functionality and the neo-brutalist UI, I will work on it with a series of new commits to refine the experience

Trial Guard will remain a completely free, open-source tool so anyone can use it and contribute. This project has been an amazing stepping stone for me in creating my own products, and I am excited to see where this momentum takes me next, I'm doing this to help people like me that likes free trial but forgets to cancel when they are done

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