Stripe Billing Explained: Pricing, Subscriptions and the 23-Hour Rule

It automates recurring payments, lets you build your own pricing plans and handles billing periods, trials and renewals for you. You can set subscriptions up in the Dashboard, with Payment Links and no code at all, with Stripe Checkout's prebuilt page, or through a custom build if you've got a developer.

Pay as you go versus a monthly plan

These figures are from Stripe's US page, in US dollars, as of October 2026. The monthly plans are an annual subscription paid monthly, on a 1-year contract.

Plan	Cost	Billing volume covered
Pay as you go	0.7% of Billing volume	Any, no recurring fee
Pay monthly, tier 1	$620 a month	Up to $100,000 a month
Pay monthly, tier 2	$1,500 a month	Up to $250,000 a month
Pay monthly, tier 3	$2,950 a month	Up to $500,000 a month
Pay monthly, tier 4	$5,750 a month	Up to $1,000,000 a month

Stripe labels the monthly tiers with discounts of 11%, 14%, 16% and 18%. Volume above your tier is charged at 0.67%, and anything over $1,000,000 a month moves to custom pricing. Stripe describes pay as you go as best for low or unpredictable volume, and for most small subscription businesses that's the honest answer.

Two lines in the small print change the maths. Pay as you go includes Billing transactions processed on and off Stripe, so recurring charges you run through another processor can still count. And it excludes one-off invoices. If you want a rough feel for when a monthly plan starts to make sense, divide the tier 1 fee by 0.7% and compare that with the Billing volume you run each month. That's simple arithmetic from the published figures, not a number Stripe gives you.

What's included in every Billing plan

• Recurring billing and subscriptions, with automatic reminders and Smart Retries.
• Recovery and retention automations, up to three, including custom retry policies by customer segment.
• The customer portal, quotes and multiphase subscription schedules.
• Invoice auto-reconciliation for ACH credit or wire payments.

Running the customer portal on your own domain is an extra $10 per month. Usage-based billing now runs through Metronome, which you contact separately, while basic usage features stay available through Stripe's Meters API with up to 100M events a month included.

The life of a Stripe subscription, status by status

This is the part of Stripe Billing that confuses most people, because a subscription moves through statuses and the names don't always mean what you'd guess. Here's the lifecycle Stripe documents:

1. trialing: the customer is in a trial period before paying.
2. incomplete: the first payment is needed now and hasn't gone through yet.
3. incomplete_expired: that first payment never arrived in time, so the subscription is dead.
4. active: the subscription is running.
5. past_due and unpaid: a later payment has failed.
6. paused: a trial ended with no default payment method and the end behaviour was set to pause.
7. canceled: a terminal state. To win the customer back you collect new payment details and create a new subscription.

Active doesn't always mean every invoice is paid, either. By default Stripe works out the status from the most recent invoice that hasn't been voided. If you'd rather it looked at all invoices, you can switch that in your subscription settings.

The 23-hour rule on a new subscription's first payment

Here's the catch that loses people sales. When a subscription is set to charge automatically and needs payment straight away, Stripe creates the first invoice and marks the subscription incomplete. Your customer then has 23 hours to pay. If they don't, the subscription becomes incomplete_expired, the invoice is voided and you have to create a brand new subscription.

So if a card is declined at signup and the customer says they'll sort it tomorrow evening, the clock may already have run out. Follow up the same day.

Subscriptions set to send an invoice work differently. Stripe emails a payment link with a due date you choose, and if there's no trial, the subscription starts as active even while that first invoice is unpaid. That's friendlier for business clients who pay on terms, but it means active won't tell you who's paid.

Setting up Stripe Billing in five moves

1. Create the product and its price in the Dashboard.
2. Create the subscription, through the Dashboard, a Payment Link, Checkout or a custom build.
3. Choose automatic charging or send-invoice collection.
4. Switch on Smart Retries and reminders so failed payments get chased.
5. Turn on the customer portal so people can update their card and cancel themselves.

Trials, the customer portal and cancellations

Stripe supports free or paid introductory periods. Its examples include a free 7-day trial, $4 for 4 weeks, upgrade trials and item-level trials for add-ons, all managed in one place.

The customer portal is a page Stripe hosts where customers update billing details, including tax IDs, change payment methods, view invoices and cancel either immediately or at the end of the period. Cancellation deflection can offer a coupon when someone tries to leave and ask them why they're going, which is useful feedback even when they still cancel. The portal supports localisation and your own branding. One quirk: a new portal session expires after 5 minutes if it isn't used, so send customers the link at the moment they need it.

Recurring charges raise the sales tax question fast, and Stripe Tax explains how the calculation works.

Is Stripe Billing the right choice for you?

If you run a membership, a retainer or any other recurring product, Stripe Billing does the heavy lifting: retries, reminders, a self-service portal and clean status tracking. At small or patchy volume, stay on pay as you go; the monthly tiers are built for businesses with serious recurring revenue and a year-long commitment. Don't forget the Billing percentage comes on top of processing, which is covered in this guide to what Stripe charges. If you're still comparing tools, my roundup of recurring billing software covers the alternatives, and what to look for in billing software is a good checklist before you commit.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Stripe Billing cost?

On Stripe's US pricing page, as of October 2026, pay as you go is 0.7% of Billing volume with no recurring fee. Monthly plans start at $620 a month for up to $100,000 of Billing volume, on a 1-year contract.

Is Stripe Billing charged on top of Stripe's processing fees?

Yes. Stripe Billing pricing covers the subscription features, and Stripe's payment processing pricing for cards and other methods still applies to each payment.

What happens if a customer doesn't pay the first subscription invoice?

For a subscription that charges automatically, the customer has 23 hours to pay. After that the subscription becomes incomplete_expired, the invoice is voided and you need to create a new subscription.

Can customers cancel a Stripe subscription themselves?

Yes, through the customer portal, where they can cancel immediately or at the end of the billing period, update payment methods and view invoices.

Does Stripe Billing pay as you go include one-off invoices?

No. Stripe's pricing page says pay as you go excludes one-off invoices, while it includes Billing transactions processed on and off Stripe.