Five free trials worth signing up to - from magazine subscriptions to recipe kits

Readly is offering a two-month subscription to its digital magazines app | Readly

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There’s nothing better than a free trial, and plenty of subscription services offer them. Here we round up the best so you can try before you buy.

This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement.

Smol

Smol is brilliant at free trials, and over the years I’ve had a free trials of most of its products (and kept a couple on after the trial). Right now you can try its laundry capsules - either bio, non-bio or fragrance free, or its dishwasher tablets.

There’s also a trial of the multi-purpose cleaning spray - you get the refillable trigger bottle and a tablet you mix with water to make the solution. This was one I carried on the subscription for - you get six new tablets in the post on a subscription basis, it’s set to every 16 weeks but you can change it.

Check out smol’s free trials here.

Readly

If you love magazines and newspapers, but you can’t afford a subscription to the print editions, the Readly app is a great option.

You get access to a huge 7,500 magazines and newspapers online, all for £12.99 a month - and there’s currently a two-month free trial.

On the app, which is best used on a tablet but works well on a phone, is Vogue, BBC Gardeners’ World and Time Magazine, and I recently wrote about my return to the app as a former subscriber. It’s a great way to read all your favourites and discover new ones, and two months gives you loads of time to get a real feel for it.

You can sign up for a two-month free trial here.

Simply Cook

Simply Cook is offering a free box which includes four recipes - you just pay £1 postage. These boxes come with the spices and sauces you need, plus a recipe card, to make a range of delicious dinners.

I’ve tried this before and made some great discoveries - dishes I’d never have otherwise tried. We loved the Korean Fried Rice Rice - known as “Bokkeumbap” - a delicious rice dish made with cabbage and a fried egg on top. The spices are to die for.

It’s also great to have four dishes you know you can easily rustle up - and there’s no long and drawn out conversations on what to have for dinner.

After your free trial, subscription renews at £9.99 per box plus £1.79 delivery, but you can cancel whenever you want. Try a free trial here.

Amazon Prime

You can sign up to a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime - and it’s not just fast delivery.

If you sign up, you get access to Prime Video so you can watch on-demand movies and series, plus Amazon Music, so you get premium access to millions of songs from your phone or Alexa.

You can also try Prime Reading, with thousands of books and magazines at your fingertips, and you get access to Amazon First Reads, which allows you to choose one Kindle book of the six Editors' Picks each month for no additional cost.

You can cancel anytime, and Prime membership is £8.99 a month after your trial period ends. You can sign up here.

Beer52

Beer and wine subscription service, Beer52 & Wine52, do a fab free trial where you get a free case of beer or wine.

For the beer, you get eight beers, a magazine and snacks, and just pay £5.95 for postage. After the first box it’s £27 a month, and you can cancel anytime. Sign up for your free box here.

And it’s a similar story for the wine, you get a case including three bottles of wine - you can choose red, white of mixed - from small producers, plus Glug Magazine and snacks - just pay postage for the first month (£8.95 - which is great value for three bottles of wine), then it’s £36 a month if you stay signed up. Sign up for your free case of wine here.