New York City's "Click to Cancel" Subscription Rule Takes Effect, Making It the First U.S. Municipality to Act

New York City became the first municipality in the United States to enforce a "click to cancel" rule for automatic subscription renewals on Thursday, joining more than half of U.S. states that have enacted similar consumer-protection measures.

The rule, which took effect October 1, requires businesses to offer customers a cancellation method that is as simple as the sign-up process. The city is also providing an online portal where consumers can file complaints against companies that do not comply.

"If a company can take your money with one click, you should be able to get your money back with one click," Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement Thursday.

New York state already has a law on the books requiring an equally easy cancellation method, but the new city rule gives municipal authorities their own enforcement powers — a distinction officials say matters for local consumers.

The move comes amid rising consumer frustration with so-called "negative option" subscription contracts, which renew automatically unless a customer actively cancels them. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission received an average of nearly 70 consumer complaints per day about hard-to-cancel subscriptions, up from 42 daily complaints in 2021, according to the agency.

The financial stakes are not trivial. U.S. adults spend an average of $1,080 per year on subscriptions, according to a 2025 survey by CNET conducted online by YouGov in April of that year, involving 2,440 adults. Of that total, consumers spend an average of $205 annually on subscriptions they no longer use. Millennials lead all generational cohorts in subscription spending, averaging $1,215 per year.

"Automatic renewals have been a pain point for consumers, and this is a popular topic with regulators, especially now given the increased focus on affordability, so I expect we'll continue to see more of these laws on the state level," said Gonzalo Mon, a partner with the law firm Kelley Drye & Warren in Washington.

The broader regulatory landscape remains unsettled at the federal level. The FTC finalized a national click-to-cancel rule in October 2024 under the Biden administration, but a coalition of business groups — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses — challenged it in court. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the rule on procedural grounds approximately one week before it was set to take effect in mid-July 2025.

The FTC has not abandoned the effort entirely. In a March 13 notice, the agency sought public comment on whether to update its decades-old Negative Options Rule, including whether to incorporate provisions from the vacated rule. Comments closed April 13.

"It's likely that the FTC will move forward, but we don't know how or when," Mon said.

In the interim, the FTC has continued to act against companies using existing consumer-protection authority. In May, the agency announced a $35 million settlement with Shutterstock over allegations that included making subscriptions difficult to cancel.

Several bills pending in Congress also seek to codify click-to-cancel requirements, including the bipartisan, bicameral Unsubscribe Act. The measure would require companies to offer easy cancellations and to obtain explicit consumer consent before charging customers after a free or reduced-cost introductory period.

Technology is also beginning to reshape how consumers navigate the subscription landscape. Meta's AI agent Muse, for instance, says it can cancel subscriptions on a user's behalf — underscoring how the proliferation of subscription services has generated both commercial opportunity and a growing demand for tools to manage them.

New York City's rule establishes a local enforcement benchmark at a moment when federal standards remain in flux, signaling that municipalities may increasingly look to fill the regulatory gap that courts and Congress have left open.

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