Cancel a subscription

Cancel subscriptions to stop billing for them permanently. Paddle stops billing customers indefinitely.

If a customer just wants to stop using your software temporarily, pause a subscription instead.

Paddle supports subscriptions with multiple products. You can cancel products like recurring addons by removing them. See: Add or remove products on a subscription

How it works

Cancellation take effect at the end of a customer's billing period. When you request to cancel a subscription, Paddle creates a scheduled change to say the subscription should be canceled on the next billing date. On the next billing date, the subscription status changes to canceled.

You should make sure customers can access your app as normal while they have a scheduled change to cancel against their subscription. After their subscription transitions to cancelled, you should restrict their access.

Paused subscriptions can be canceled immediately, rather than at the end of a customer's billing period.

You can't reactivate a subscription that's canceled.

Reduce active churn with Retain

When customers go to cancel, Retain by Paddle analyzes dozens of data points to salvage that relationship. Smart cancellation flows capture cancellation reason, then suggests other plans, support calls, or a targeted salvage offer.

Cancel a subscription

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17    "billing_details": null,
18    "current_billing_period": {
19      "starts_at": "2023-09-18T16:26:41.252962Z",
20      "ends_at": "2023-10-18T16:26:41.252962Z"
21    },
22    "billing_cycle": {
23      "frequency": 1,
24      "interval": "month"
25    },
26    "scheduled_change": {
27      "action": "cancel",
28      "effective_at": "2023-10-18T16:26:41.252962Z",
29      "resume_at": null
30    },
31    "items": [
32      {
33        "status": "active",
34        "quantity": 10,
35        "recurring": true,
36        "created_at": "2023-08-18T16:25:40.591Z",

Cancel a paused subscription

You can cancel paused subscriptions right away, rather than waiting for the end of the billing period.

Send a POST request to the /subscriptions/{subscription_id}/cancel endpoint.

Request

In your body, include effective_from and set to immediately.

This field is only valid for subscriptions where the status is paused. This doesn't include subscriptions that are active with a scheduled pause against them.

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1{
2  "effective_from": "immediately" 
3}

Response

If successful, Paddle returns a copy of the updated subscription entity. The subscription status is canceled.

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1{
2  "data": {
3    "id": "sub_01gt25ckjxg1v11jnq9dnrkpfz",
4    "status": "canceled",
5    "customer_id": "ctm_01gt25aq4b2zcfw12szwtjrbdt",
6    "address_id": "add_01gt25aq58yh9ne06zkjvysnaa",
7    "business_id": null,
8    "currency_code": "USD",
9    "created_at": "2023-02-24T16:51:34.109677Z",
10    "updated_at": "2023-09-24T16:57:19.647163Z",
11    "started_at": "2023-02-24T16:51:33.176163Z",
12    "first_billed_at": "2023-02-24T16:51:33.176163Z",
13    "next_billed_at": null,
14    "paused_at": "2023-09-24T16:52:08.390163Z",
15    "canceled_at": "2023-09-24T16:57:19.646163Z",
16    "collection_mode": "automatic",
17    "billing_details": null,
18    "current_billing_period": null,
19    "billing_cycle": {
20      "frequency": 1,

Remove a scheduled cancellation

You can stop a cancellation from going through at the end of the billing period by removing the scheduled change.

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1{
2  "scheduled_change": null
3}

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17    "billing_details": null,
18    "current_billing_period": {
19      "starts_at": "2023-08-18T16:25:38.870962Z",
20      "ends_at": "2023-09-18T16:25:38.870962Z"
21    },
22    "billing_cycle": {
23      "frequency": 1,
24      "interval": "month"
25    },
26    "scheduled_change": null,
27    "items": [
28      {
29        "status": "active",
30        "quantity": 10,
31        "recurring": true,
32        "created_at": "2023-08-18T16:25:40.591Z",
33        "updated_at": "2023-08-18T16:25:40.591Z",
34        "previously_billed_at": "2023-08-18T16:25:38.870962Z",
35        "next_billed_at": "2023-09-18T16:25:38.870962Z",
36        "trial_dates": null,

Notifications

Related pages