Troubleshooting · Plain-English answer
Cancel wherever you pay. If you subscribed through the provider's website, turn off auto renewal in your account settings. If you subscribed through the App Store or Google Play, cancel in your store subscriptions, because the provider cannot do it for you. Uninstalling the app never cancels the billing.
The single most common cancellation mistake is deleting the app and assuming the payments stop. They do not. Billing lives wherever you originally paid, so start there. Website signups are cancelled in the provider's account dashboard, usually under billing or subscription, by switching off auto renewal.
App store signups are different: Apple and Google hold the billing relationship, and the provider genuinely cannot stop it. On iPhone, cancel under your Apple ID subscriptions. On Android, open the Play Store's subscriptions section. The service then runs until the paid period ends.
Check the refund policy before assuming anything, since many providers offer a money back window on first purchases, and consumer law in the UK and EU adds a fourteen day cooling off period for online purchases in most cases. App store refunds go through Apple or Google, not the provider.
You rarely lose access at the moment you cancel; the subscription simply does not renew. If you want to keep a basic level of protection afterwards, ROOT's free tier works without a card, so cancelling a paid plan does not have to mean going unprotected.
More from the ROOT VPN answers hub.
ROOT VPN is free to start with unlimited data, no card needed, and no activity logs.
Get ROOT VPN, free