Stripe takes recurring payments in three ways: a subscription that charges a saved card or bank account every period, a subscription that emails an invoice each period, or a payment method saved at checkout that you charge yourself. Subscriptions run on Stripe Billing, which costs 0.7% of Billing volume on pay-as-you-go, on top of processing at 2.9% + 30¢ per US card payment or 0.8% capped at $5 for ACH. A subscription keeps charging until it's cancelled, so a fixed number of payments needs an end date.
Every price and rule below is from Stripe's own pricing pages and documentation, opened on 4 November 2026. Negotiated pricing can differ, so check your own Stripe fee schedule too.
How do recurring payments work in Stripe?
Stripe gives you three ways to charge the same customer again and again:
- A subscription that charges automatically. The customer's card or bank account is saved, and Stripe charges it on each billing date. Stripe creates an invoice and a payment for every period and tracks the subscription's status as it goes (Stripe: how subscriptions work).
- A subscription that emails an invoice. With the collection method set to send an invoice, Stripe emails the customer a link to each period's invoice with a due date you choose, and the customer pays it themselves.
- A saved payment method you charge yourself. You save the card or bank account during a first payment or without one, then your own software starts each later payment while the customer is away (Stripe: save a payment method).
The first two are Stripe Billing. The third is ordinary payments, with the schedule kept somewhere other than Stripe.
How do you set up a recurring payment in the Stripe Dashboard?
Without code, a subscription is made under Subscriptions in the Dashboard (Stripe: create subscriptions):
- Click +Create subscription and find or add the customer.
- Add the product and its price. You can add more than one product.
- Set the start and end dates.
- Set the date the billing cycle starts. That is when each invoice is made and, depending on your settings, when the saved payment method is charged.
- Turn on email reminders and notifications for the customer, which Stripe recommends.
- Turn on the revenue recovery features if you want failed payments retried.
Customers can also sign up through a Stripe payment link that sells a recurring price.
A recurring price repeats daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, and an interval count stretches that: a monthly price with a count of 3 bills every three months, and a weekly price with a count of 2 bills every two weeks (Stripe: the Price object).
What do Stripe recurring payments cost?
Processing is the same as any other Stripe payment (Stripe pricing):
| What | Stripe's published US price |
|---|---|
| Domestic card | 2.9% + 30¢ per successful payment |
| International card | + 1.5% |
| Currency conversion | + 1% |
| ACH Direct Debit | 0.8%, capped at $5.00 |
| Each card dispute | $15.00 |
Stripe charges no setup or monthly fee for the account itself. Subscriptions add Stripe Billing, which on pay-as-you-go is 0.7% of Billing volume with no recurring fee. Stripe also sells Billing on a one-year contract, from $620 a month for up to $100,000 of monthly Billing volume, with 0.67% on volume above each tier (Stripe Billing pricing). One-off invoices don't count toward Billing volume.
What do 36 payments of $380 every two weeks cost?
Take a $13,680 balance paid as 36 payments of $380, one every two weeks, at Stripe's standard US prices:
| By card | By ACH | |
|---|---|---|
| Processing, per payment | $11.32 | $3.04 |
| Processing, 36 payments | $407.52 | $109.44 |
| Billing on a subscription (0.7% of $13,680) | $95.76 | $95.76 |
| As a subscription, total | $503.28 | $205.20 |
ACH stays under the $5 cap at this size, so every bank payment costs 0.8%. Charged on a saved payment method without a subscription, Stripe's published price is processing alone, $407.52 by card or $109.44 by ACH, but then the schedule, the reminders and the follow-up on a failed payment are yours to run. The Stripe fee calculator works out the card side for any amount, and ACH fees covers the bank side.
What happens when a recurring payment fails in Stripe?
On a subscription, Stripe Billing can retry it (Stripe: automate payment retries):
- Smart Retries picks the times to retry. You set the number of retries within 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 1 month or 2 months. New Stripe accounts start with up to 8 retries within 2 weeks.
- A custom schedule instead allows up to three retries, each a number of days after the one before.
- Hard declines aren't retried. A lost or stolen card, a revoked authorization or a payment that needs the customer to authenticate waits for a new payment method.
- Bank debits aren't retried by default. Once turned on, a failed ACH Direct Debit is retried for insufficient funds only, at most twice within 40 days.
When the retries run out, the subscription does what your settings say: it is cancelled, marked unpaid (invoices keep being made but aren't charged), left past due, or paused if it's eligible.
The very first payment is different. A new subscription that charges automatically gives the customer 23 hours to pay its first invoice. Retries don't run on that first payment, and if it isn't paid in time the subscription expires and the invoice is voided (Stripe: how subscriptions work).
On a saved payment method you charge yourself, nothing retries for you. Stripe says that when an off-session payment fails you must tell the customer to come back and complete it, and a payment declined because it needs authentication is finished by the customer on your page (Stripe: save a payment method).
What do you need from the customer before charging them again?
Stripe puts the compliance on you. To charge a saved payment method while the customer is offline, your terms need to include (Stripe: save a payment method):
- the customer's agreement to you starting a payment or a series of payments for specified transactions;
- when and how often the payments are expected, for example scheduled installments or subscription payments;
- how you work out the amount;
- your cancellation policy, if it's a subscription.
Stripe also says to collect consent explicitly, for example with a "Save my payment method for future use" checkbox, to use the saved method only for what your terms say, and to keep a record of the customer's written agreement.
Is a Stripe subscription the same as a payment plan?
No. A subscription charges the same amount every period until it's cancelled. Stripe lets you cancel at the end of a period, on a custom date, or after a set number of billing cycles, but you have to set that up. A payment plan is a known balance paid off by a set date, often after a deposit, and a balance that doesn't divide evenly leaves the last payment a few cents different from the rest. Does Stripe offer payment plans? walks through building one with a subscription schedule, phase by phase.
Billing's 0.7% also applies to every payment of a plan run as a subscription, which is $95.76 on the $13,680 above.
How do recurring payments work across several locations?
A subscription, its customer, its products and its prices all live in one Stripe account, and the money goes to that account. A business whose locations are separate legal entities usually has a Stripe account per entity, for the reasons in One LLC per location. Each location then needs its own products and prices, its own retry and failed-payment settings, and its own subscriptions, and a customer signed up in the wrong account pays the wrong entity.
Changelog
- 4 November 2026: first published, with Stripe's US pricing, Billing pricing and subscription documentation as they read that day.
Payment plans built from the deal in HubSpot or Pipedrive, with each location paid into its own account and books.
Paycove builds the recurring payment or the payment plan from the deal in your CRM and charges it through the Stripe account of the location that made the sale.
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