Stripe offers several ways to charge customers on a recurring basis. This guide helps you understand which method or approach best supports your business.
This guide offers a few ways to understand your options:
Use cases
Types of recurring payments
The following tabs describe the different types of recurring payments that Stripe supports.
Charges on saved payment methods
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Overview | Use Stripe Billing to create and manage your subscriptions through the Dashboard or programmatically through the API. |
| Features | - No coding required. (You can optionally use the Subscriptions API and prebuilt components like Stripe Checkout and Elements to build a programmatic subscriptions integration.)
- Customize appearance and behavior in your app.
- Supports multiple products and prices in different currencies.
- Supports responsive web and mobile native.
- Website required. You can use Stripe Elements to customize the appearance of payment forms.
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| Use cases | |
Stripe products for recurring payments
The following table describes which Stripe products support recurring payments.
| Product | Features | Use cases |
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| Payment Links | - No coding
- Customize branding
- One payment link for one or more products
- Mobile support for responsive web
- No website required; share link through SMS, email, or social media
- Stripe Tax support
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| Invoicing | - No coding required. (You can optionally use the Invoices API and prebuilt components like Stripe Checkout and Elements to build a programmatic invoicing integration.)
- Customize branding and templates.
- One invoice for one or more products. Optionally combine one-time and recurring products.
- Mobile support for responsive web.
- No website required. Share invoices through customer portal, hosted invoice page, or as PDFs.
- Stripe Tax support.
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| Subscriptions | - No coding required. (You can optionally use the Subscriptions API and prebuilt components like Stripe Checkout and Elements to build a programmatic subscriptions integration.)
- Customize full appearance of payment forms and checkout experience.
- Multiple products, prices, pricing models, and currencies.
- Mobile support for responsive web.
- No website required. You can also add subscriptions to your site.
- Stripe Tax support.
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| Checkout | - Minimal coding
- Customize branding
- Multiple products and prices in different currencies
- Mobile support for responsive web
- Website required, but Stripe hosts the payment page
- Stripe Tax support
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| Elements | - More coding
- Customize full appearance
- Multiple products and prices in different currencies
- Responsive web and mobile native
- Website required; you add Elements to your payment page
- Stripe Tax supported with your own tax integration
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| API | - Most coding
- Customize full appearance, accept payments through your own UI
- Multiple products and prices in different currencies
- Website required; accept payments through your own UI
- Stripe Tax supported with your own tax integration
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Accept recurring payments
Stripe offers several ways for you to accept recurring payments. Use Subscriptions with Stripe Billing, PaymentIntents, SetupIntents, or Invoicing.
Use subscriptions to accept recurring payments
Save and reuse payment information for recurring charges
Use invoices to automatically charge customers
Split purchases into a few payments
Offer your customers payment plans in installments with Subscription Schedules API (part of Stripe Billing) or buy now, pay later methods. If your business is based in Mexico, you can offer card payments in installments.
Create an installment plan with Subscription Schedules
Use a buy now, pay later payment method
Accept card payments in installments
Enable customers to manage their own subscriptions
If you want your customers to manage their own accounts and recurring subscriptions, use the customer portal. Stripe hosts the customer portal, which allows your customers to self-manage their payment details, download invoices, and manage their subscriptions in one place. Read the no-code customer portal guide for complete details.
Integrate with the customer portal API
Set up the customer portal
See what your customers can do in the customer portal
View demo
Accept recurring donations
You can accept recurring donations with Stripe, in the same way as recurring payments. For example, you have a llama rescue organization, Llama House, and want to allow supporters to choose an amount for a recurring, monthly donation. You can use Payment Links to create a link to share on social media and email. From the same payment link, you can also generate a QR code to add to flyers, and an embeddable buy button for your websiteall from the Dashboard.
Accept recurring donations with Payment Links
Migrate existing subscriptions to Stripe
If you have existing subscriptions in another system, you can migrate them to Stripe Billing. Read the guide for more information.