Cancelling your subscription doesn't immediately wipe your account. There's a deliberate sequence of states your data passes through, and understanding the sequence is the difference between "I cancelled and lost everything" and "I cancelled, took a break, and came back fine."
This article walks through what each stage looks like, what you can and can't do at each one, and the windows you have to act in if you change your mind or need to grab a copy of your records.
Stage 1: Until the end of your current paid period
When you cancel, you don't lose access on the same day. You keep using Gold Silver Ledger normally — full features, full editing rights, live spot prices, everything as it was — through to the end of the billing period you've already paid for.
A few practical points:
Cancel any time, lose nothing. Cancelling on day 2 of a monthly period and cancelling on day 29 give you the same access for the remaining days. The cancel button stops the next charge; it doesn't end the current period.
No partial refund. The unused portion of the period isn't returned to you — you still have access to it, which is the trade.
Everything still works. Record new buys, record sells, edit transactions, switch portfolios, run reports. As far as the app is concerned, you're a normal paying user until the period actually ends.
The end-of-period date is shown on your Subscription tab and in the cancellation confirmation email so you know exactly when the next stage begins.
Stage 2: Read-only mode with a frozen spot price
When your paid period ends, the account moves into read-only mode. You can still sign in and look around — but the editing tools are switched off.
What's switched off:
Recording new buy or sell transactions.
Editing or deleting existing transactions.
Creating new custom products or new portfolios.
Adding or editing dealers, nicknames, or any other annotations.
The other important thing that changes is the spot price freeze. While your subscription was active, the app was pulling live spot prices for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium continuously and updating every page's value calculations.
In read-only mode, that live feed stops. The spot price on your account is locked at whatever it was at the moment your paid period ended.
If you want continued tracking, the answer is to reactivate — covered in [Reactivating a cancelled subscription].
Stage 3: The retention window
Read-only mode lasts for a defined retention window. We keep your data on our systems during this window so that, if you change your mind, we can bring you back without you having to re-enter anything.
The current retention window is being finalized. What you can rely on is the shape:
You can sign in throughout the window.
The read-only view of your data remains available.
Reactivating at any point during the window restores everything to the way it was — same transactions, same holdings, same custom products, same preferences.
If you anticipate coming back, the retention window is what gives you breathing room. You don't need to make the decision the same day you cancelled.
Stage 4: Permanent deletion
Once the retention window ends, your data is removed permanently. From that point onwards:
The deletion can't be reversed.
We don't have a copy to restore.
The email address is free to be used to create a brand-new account from scratch — but it would be a fresh account, with no link back to anything you previously had.
If you later sign up again under the same email, you'd start with an empty ledger and a 14-day trial like any other new user.
Before stage 2, please grab your records
This is the most useful thing to know in this whole article: while you're still in stage 1 — your paid period — you have full export rights. Take advantage of them.
Export your transactions as a CSV. Even if you don't think you'll need it, future-you may.
Export your holdings as a CSV. A snapshot of what you own at the moment of export.
Generate any annual reports you need (Premium). Annual Reports are produced from your transaction data; once that data is deleted, regenerating an old report becomes impossible.
Download any Stripe receipts you care about from the billing portal — see [Viewing past invoices and receipts]. Stripe-side invoices live with Stripe and aren't affected by what happens on our side, but it's easier to grab them all in one sitting than to hunt around later.
You can still run a CSV export in stage 2 (read-only mode), but the cleanest moment to do it is while everything is fully live and you don't have to second-guess whether anything is missing.
Where to go next
Cancelling your subscription: The click path to start this sequence in the first place.
[Reactivating a cancelled subscription]: For picking up where you left off during the retention window.
Exporting your transactions as CSV: How to save a copy of your records.
Exporting your holdings as CSV: The holdings-snapshot equivalent.
Viewing past invoices and receipts: For grabbing your Stripe receipts while you're at it.
Deleting your account: The bigger step that skips most of stage 2 by ending things deliberately.