Sell subscriptions

This topic describes how to handle subscription lifecycle events, such as renewals and expirations. It also describes additional subscription features such as offering promotions and allowing your users to manage their own subscriptions.

If you haven't configured subscription products for your app, see Create and configure your products.

Subscriptions overview

A subscription represents a set of benefits users can access during a specified time period. For example, a subscription might entitle a user to access a music streaming service.

You can have multiple subscriptions within the same app, either to represent different sets of benefits, or different tiers of a single set of benefits ("Silver" and "Gold" tiers, for example).

Through base plans and offers, you can create multiple configurations for the same subscription product. For example, you can create an introductory offer for users who have never subscribed to your app. Similarly, you can create an upgrade offer for users who are already subscribed.

For a detailed overview of subscription products, base plans, and offers, see the documentation in the Play Console Help Center.

Prepaid plans integration

Prepaid plans do not automatically renew upon expiration. To extend their subscription entitlement without interruption, the user must top-up a prepaid plan for the same subscription.

For top-ups, launch the billing flow as you would with the original purchase. You do not need to indicate that a purchase is a top-up.

Prepaid plan top-ups always use the IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_FULL_PRICE proration mode, and you don't need to set this mode explicitly. The user is immediately charged for a full billing period, and their entitlement is extended by the duration specified in the top-up.

After a top-up, the following fields in the Purchase result object are updated to reflect the most recent top-up purchase:

• Order id
• Purchase time
• Signature
• Purchase token
• Acknowledged

The following Purchase fields always contain the same data found in the original purchase:

• Package name
• Purchase state
• Products
• Auto renewing

Prepaid purchase acknowledgement

Similar to auto-renewing subscriptions, you must acknowledge prepaid plans after purchase. Both the initial purchase and any top-ups need to be acknowledged. For more information, see Processing purchases.

Due to the potential for short prepaid plan durations, it is important to acknowledge the purchase as soon as possible.

Prepaid plans with a duration of one week or longer must be acknowledged within three days.

Prepaid plans with a duration shorter than one week must be acknowledged within half the plan duration. For example, developers have 1.5 days to acknowledge a three-day prepaid plan.

Use deep links to allow users to manage a subscription

As a developer, you must make it easy for your customers to manage their subscription. Your app should include a link on a settings or preferences screen that allows users to manage their subscriptions. An example of this link is shown in figure 4.

In this link's click handler, add logic to determine whether the user has any non-expired subscriptions for your app, where expiryTime is in the future or autoRenewing is set to true.

Each subscription's productId matches the product ID that you assigned to it when creating it in the Play Console. To programmatically determine the productId for an existing subscription, query your app's backend for a list of subscriptions associated with a particular user.

If the user has a non-expired subscription, you can direct them to a URL similar to the following, replacing "your-sub-product-id" and "your-app-package" with the subscription ID and app package info:

https://play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions?sku=your-sub-product-id&package=your-app-package

If a user doesn't have any non-expired subscriptions within your app, use the following URL to direct them to the page that shows all of their other subscriptions, as shown in figures 5 and 6:

https://play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions

You can find example code for subscription link logic in the Classy Taxi sample app.

Allow users to upgrade, downgrade, or change their subscription

You can offer users different subscription tiers, such as a base tier and a premium tier. Figure 7 shows a screen that offers two subscription tiers:

Users should be able to access a screen similar to figure 7 to upgrade or downgrade a subscription. When upgrading or downgrading a subscription, you can set the proration mode that determines how the change affects your subscribers.

The following table lists available proration modes:

If the user is changing subscription entitlements, you must specify the proration rate at runtime. For changes in entitlement, you cannot specify a default proration mode through the Google Play Console.

If the user is not changing subscription entitlements, you can use the default proration mode configured through the Play Console. You can also override this behavior by specifying a proration mode in SubscriptionUpdateParams. Note the following restrictions:

• When upgrading, downgrading, or doing a same-subscription switch to a prepaid plan from either a prepaid plan or auto-renewing plan, the only allowed proration mode is IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_FULL_PRICE. If you specify any other proration mode, the purchase fails, and an error is shown to the user.
• When switching plans within the same subscription to an auto-renewing plan from a prepaid plan, valid proration modes are IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_FULL_PRICE and IMMEDIATE_WITHOUT_PRORATION. If you specify any other proration mode, the purchase fails, and an error is shown to the user.

Proration examples

To understand how each proration mode works, consider the following scenario:

Samwise has a subscription to online content from the Country Gardener app. He currently has a monthly subscription to the Tier 1 version of the content, which is text-only. This subscription costs him $2 per month, and it renews on the first of the month.

On April 15, Samwise chose to upgrade to the annual version of the Tier 2 subscription, which includes video updates and costs $36 per year.

When upgrading the subscription, the developer selects a proration mode. The following list describes how each proration mode affects Samwise's subscription:

IMMEDIATE_WITH_TIME_PRORATION

Samwise's Tier 1 subscription ends immediately. Since he paid for a full month (April 1-30) but upgraded halfway through the subscription period, half of a month's subscription ($1) is applied to his new subscription. However, since that new subscription costs $36 per year, the $1 credit balance pays for only 10 days (April 16-25), so on April 26, he is charged $36 for a new subscription and another $36 on April 26th of each year following.

IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_PRORATED_PRICE

This mode can be used because the Tier 2 subscription price per time unit ($36/year = $3/month) is greater than Tier 1 subscription price per time unit ($2/month). Samwise's Tier 1 subscription is immediately ended. Since he paid for a full month but used only half of it, half of a month's subscription ($1) is applied to his new subscription. However, since that new subscription costs $36/year, the remaining 15 days costs $1.50, so he is charged the difference of $0.50 for his new subscription. On May 1st, Samwise is charged $36 for his new subscription tier and another $36 on May 1 of each year following.

IMMEDIATE_WITHOUT_PRORATION

Samwise's Tier 1 subscription is immediately upgraded to Tier 2 with no extra charge, and on May 1st he is charged $36 for his new subscription tier and another $36 on May 1 of each year following.

DEFERRED

Samwise's Tier 1 subscription continues until it expires on April 30. On May 1st, the Tier 2 subscription takes effect, and Samwise is charged $36 for his new subscription tier.

IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_FULL_PRICE

Samwise's Tier 1 subscription is immediately ended. His Tier 2 subscription begins today and he is charged $36. Since he paid for a full month but used only half of it, half of a month's subscription ($1) is applied to his new subscription. Since that new subscription costs $36/year, he would get 1/36th of a year added on to his subscription period (~10 days). Therefore, Samwise's next charge would be 1 year and 10 days from today for $36. After that, he is charged $36 each year following.

When choosing a proration mode, be sure to review our proration recommendations.

Your app can offer users an upgrade or downgrade using the same steps as with launching a purchase flow. However, when upgrading or downgrading, you need to provide details for the current subscription, the future (upgraded or downgraded) subscription, and the proration mode to use, as shown in the following example:

String offerToken = productDetails
                        .getSubscriptionOfferDetails(selectedOfferIndex)
                        .getOfferToken();

BillingFlowParams billingFlowParams = BillingFlowParams.newBuilder()
    .setProductDetailsParamsList(
        ImmuableList.of(
            ProductDetailsParams.newBuilder()
                // fetched via queryProductDetailsAsync
                .setProductDetails(productDetails)
                // offerToken can be found in
                // ProductDetails=>SubscriptionOfferDetails
                .setOfferToken(offerToken)
                .build()))
    .setSubscriptionUpdateParams(
        SubscriptionUpdateParams.newBuilder()
            // purchaseToken can be found in Purchase#getPurchaseToken
            .setOldSkuPurchaseToken("old_purchase_token")
            .setReplaceSkusProrationMode(ProrationMode.IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_FULL_PRICE)
            .build())
    .build();

BillingResult billingResult = billingClient.launchBillingFlow(activity, billingFlowParams);

// process purchase results from PurchasesUpdatedListener registered with BillingClient
public void onPurchaseUpdated(BillingResult billingResult, @Nullable List<Purchase> purchases) {
  // check BillingResult
  // process returned Purchase list, e.g. grant entitlement
}

For the immediate replacement proration modes, your app receives the new purchase in your PurchasesUpdatedListener. The purchase is also available in BillingClient.queryPurchasesAsync(). When you receive the purchase token, follow the same verification process as with verifying a new purchase token. Make sure to acknowledge these purchases with BillingClient.acknowledgePurchase() from the Google Play Billing Library or Purchases.subscriptions:acknowledge from the Google Play Developer API.

The Google Play Developer API returns a linkedPurchaseToken in the subscription resource. Be sure to invalidate the token provided in the linkedPurchaseToken to ensure that the old token is not used to gain access to your services. See Upgrades, downgrades, and resignups for information on handling upgrade and downgrade purchases.

For the deferred replacement mode, your app receives a call to your PurchasesUpdatedListener with the purchase of the original subscription plan and a status of whether the upgrade or downgrade was successful. Until the replacement takes effect, BillingClient.queryPurchasesAsync() continues to return the purchase for the original subscription plan. Once the new plan takes effect, queryPurchasesAsync() returns the purchase data for the new subscription, and a SUBSCRIPTION_RENEWED notification is sent to your secure backend server. For deferred replacements, it is strongly recommended to listen to this notification and to acknowledge the purchase using Purchases.subscriptions:acknowledge. The linkedPurchaseToken in the subscription resource can be used to determine which user in your subscription backend, if applicable, should be updated with the new entitlement. Your app should not rely on the user opening the app and acknowledging via BillingClient.acknowledgePurchase(), since the user might not open the app within three days of the plan change taking effect.

Upgrading with free trial or intro price offers

Free trial eligibility settings apply when a user is upgrading or downgrading. You can adjust the free trial eligibility settings in the Google Play Console.

Note the following:

• If users can receive only one free trial across all available subscriptions in your app, the plan the user is changing to will not have a free trial or intro price.
• If you provide one free trial per subscription product, the plan the user is changing to may have a free trial or intro price.

The following table describes the behavior of each proration mode if both the new and old plans have a free trial, and the user is upgrading during a free trial:

To understand how free trial transitions work in the default case of one free trial per app, consider the following scenario:

Maria has a subscription to online content from the Country Gardener app. She currently has a monthly subscription to the Tier 1 version of the content, which is text-only. This subscription costs her $10/month, and she subscribed on April 1. She is enjoying a 30-day free trial as a first-time subscriber, which means her first payment is due on May 1.

On April 15, Maria chooses to upgrade to the Tier 2 subscription, which includes video updates and costs $20/month. This second subscription has a 30-day trial as well.

The following list describes how the free trial transition for each proration mode:

• IMMEDIATE_WITH_TIME_PRORATION - Maria is upgraded to Tier 2 immediately. Since Maria upgraded halfway through the subscription period, half of the month's subscription (15 days valued at $10/month) is applied to her new subscription. However, since that new subscription costs $20/month, the 15 day balance pays for only 7.5 days. Maria is not eligible for another free trial to Tier 2, so starting April 22, she is charged $20 every month.
• IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_PRORATED_PRICE - This mode can be used because the Tier 2 subscription price per time unit ($20/month) is greater than the Tier 1 subscription price per time unit ($10/month). Maria's Tier 1 subscription is immediately upgraded to Tier 2, and she loses her free trial. Since Maria's next billing date was May 1, she is charged $10 today to cover the 2nd half of April, then starting May 1 she is charged $20 every month.
• IMMEDIATE_WITHOUT_PRORATION - Maria's Tier 1 subscription is immediately upgraded to Tier 2. Maria keeps her free trial until April 30 and now has access to Tier 2 content. Starting May 1, she is charged $20 every month.
• DEFERRED - Maria's Tier 1 subscription continues until the next payment is due on May 1. On May 1, the Tier 2 subscription takes effect, and Maria is charged $20 on the first of every month.
• IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_FULL_PRICE - Maria's Tier 1 subscription is immediately upgraded to Tier 2, and she loses her free trial. She is charged $20 today. Since Maria's has 15 days left in her free trial, her next billing date is 1 month + 15 days from now, or July 1st. Starting July 1st, she is charged $20 every month.

The following list describes the transition behavior if the developer instead allows one free trial per subscription:

• IMMEDIATE_WITH_TIME_PRORATION - Maria is upgraded to Tier 2 immediately. Since Maria upgraded halfway through the subscription period, half of the month's subscription (15 days valued at $10/month) is applied to her new subscription. However, since that new subscription costs $20/month, the 15 day balance pays for only 7.5 days. Maria is eligible for another free trial to Tier 2, so she is not charged for another 37.5 days. Starting May 22, she is charged $20 every month.
• IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_PRORATED_PRICE - This mode can be used because the Tier 2 subscription price per time unit ($20/month) is greater than the Tier 1 subscription price per time unit ($10/month). Maria's Tier 1 subscription is immediately upgraded to Tier 2, and she loses her free trial. Since Maria's next billing date was May 1, she is charged $10 today to cover the 2nd half of April, then starting May 1 she is charged $20 every month.
• IMMEDIATE_WITHOUT_PRORATION - Maria's Tier 1 subscription is immediately upgraded to Tier 2. Maria keeps her free trial until April 30 and now has access to Tier 2.
• DEFERRED - Maria's Tier 1 subscription continues until the next payment is due on May 1. On May 1, the Tier 2 subscription takes effect, and Maria is charged $20 on the first of every month.
• IMMEDIATE_AND_CHARGE_FULL_PRICE - Maria's Tier 1 subscription is immediately upgraded to Tier 2, and she loses her free trial. She is charged $20 today. Since Maria's has 15 days left in her free trial, her next billing date is 1 month + 15 days from now, or July 1st. Starting July 1st, she is charged $20 every month.

Proration recommendations

The following table shows diferrent proration scenarios along with what we recommend for each scenario:

Customer management

Using Real-time developer notifications, you can detect in real time when a user decides to cancel. When a user cancels, but before their subscription has expired, you can send them push notifications or in-app messages to ask them to resubscribe.

After a user has cancelled their subscription, you can try to win them back either in your app, or through the Play store. The following table describes various subscription scenarios along with associated winback actions and app requirements.

Before subscription expiration - in-app

For subscriptions that have been canceled but have not yet expired, you can allow subscribers to restore their subscription within your app by applying the same in-app product purchase flow as for new subscribers. Ensure your UI reflects that the user has an existing subscription. For example, you might want to display the user's current expiration date and recurring price with a Reactivate button.

Most of the time, you will want to offer the user the same price and SKU they were already subscribed to, as follows:

• Initiate a new subscription purchase with the same SKU.
• The new subscription replaces the old one and renews on the same expiration date. The old subscription is immediately marked as expired.
• As an example, Achilles has a subscription to Example Music App, and the subscription is due to expire on August 1. On July 10, he resubscribes to the one-month subscription at the same price per month. The new subscription is prorated with the remaining credit, is immediately active, and still renews on August 1.

If you would like to offer a different price—for example a new free trial or a winback discount—you can instead offer a different SKU to the user:

• Initiate an upgrade or downgrade with the different SKU using the proration mode IMMEDIATE_WITHOUT_PRORATION.
• The new subscription replaces the old one and renews on the same expiration date. The user is charged the price of the new SKU, including any introductory prices, on the original expiration date. If the old subscription was created using an obfuscated account id, that same id should be passed to the BillingFlowParams for upgrades and downgrades.
• As an example, Achilles has a subscription to Example Music App, and the subscription is due to expire on August 1. On July 10, he resubscribes to an annual subscription with an introductory price. The new subscription is immediately active, and the user is charged the introductory price on August 1.
• If you decide to include a free trial or intro price in your winback SKU, ensure that the user is eligible by unchecking the Allow one free trial per app box in the Google Play Console, which restricts the user to getting one free trial per app.

When you receive the purchase token, process the purchase just as you would with a new subscription. Additionally, the Google Play Developer API returns a linkedPurchaseToken in the subscription resource. Be sure to invalidate the token provided in the linkedPurchaseToken to ensure that the old token is not used to gain access to your services.

Before subscription expiration - in Play Store

While the subscription is canceled but still active, users can restore the subscription in the Google Play subscriptions center by clicking Resubscribe (previously Restore). This keeps the same subscription and purchase token.

For more information on restoring subscriptions, see Restorations.

After subscription expiration - in-app

You can allow expired subscribers to resubscribe within your app by applying the same in-app product purchase flow as for new subscribers. Note the following:

• To offer users a discount, you might want to offer a product ID with special pricing for your subscription, also called a winback SKU. You can provide the offer in your app, or you can notify the user of the offer outside of the app, such as in email.
• To start a winback subscription, launch the purchase flow in your Android app using the Google Play Billing Library. This is the same process as with a new subscription, but you can determine the SKU that is available to the user.
• If you decide to include a free trial or intro price in your winback SKU, ensure that the user is eligible by unchecking the Allow one free trial per app box in the Google Play Console, which restricts the user to getting one free trial per app.
• If the user resubscribes to the same SKU, they are no longer eligible for free trials or introductory price. Ensure that your UI reflects this.

When you receive the purchase token, process the purchase just as you would with a new subscription. You will not receive a linkedPurchaseToken in the subscription resource.

After subscription expiration - in Play Store

If enabled, users can resubscribe to the same SKU for up to one year after expiration by clicking Resubscribe in the Google Play subscriptions center. This generates a new subscription and purchase token.

Resubscribing is considered an out-of-app purchase, so be sure to follow best practices for handling purchases made from outside your app.

Promote your subscription

You can create promotion codes to give selected users an extended free trial to an existing subscription. To learn more, see Promo codes.

For free trials, Google Play verifies that the user has a valid payment method before starting the free trial. Some users may see this verification as a hold or charge on their payment method. This hold or charge is temporary and is later reversed or refunded.

After the trial period ends, the user's payment method is charged for the full subscription amount.

If a user cancels a subscription at any time during the free trial, the subscription remains active until the end of the trial, and they aren't charged when the free trial period ends.

Cancel, refund, or revoke

You can use the Google Play Developer API to cancel, refund, or revoke a subscription. This functionality is also available in the Google Play Console.

• Cancel: Users can cancel a subscription on Google Play. You can also provide an option for users to cancel in your app or on your website. Your app should handle these cancellations as described in Revocations.
• Refund: When you refund, the user can continue to use the subscription. Refunds can be used if, for example, there was a technical error that prevented the user from accessing your product, but the error has been resolved. Note that to refund more than the most recent payment, or if you want to issue a partial refund, you must use the Google Play Console.
• Revoke: When you revoke, the user immediately loses access to the subscription. This can be used if, for example, there was a technical error that prevented the user from accessing your product, and the user does not want to continue using the product. Your app should handle these cancellations as described in Revocations.

The following table illustrates the differences between cancel, refund, and revoke.

Defer billing for a subscriber

You can advance the next billing date for an auto-renewing subscriber by using Purchases.subscriptions:defer from the Google Play Developer API. During the deferral period, the user is subscribed to your content with full access but is not charged. The subscription renewal date is updated to reflect the new date.

For prepaid plans, you can use the defer billing API to defer the expiration time.

Deferred billing allows you to do the following:

• Give users free access as a special offer, such as giving one week free for purchasing a movie.
• Give free access to customers as a gesture of goodwill.

Billing can be deferred by as little as one day and by as long as one year per API call. To defer the billing even further, you can call the API again before the new billing date arrives.

As an example, Darcy has a monthly subscription to online content for the Fishing Quarterly app. She is normally billed £1.25 on the first of each month. In March, she participated in an online survey for the app publisher. The publisher rewards her with six free weeks by deferring the next payment until May 15, which is six weeks after her previously scheduled billing date of April 1. Darcy is not charged for April or the beginning of May and still has access to the content. On May 15, she is charged the normal £1.25 subscription fee for the month. Her next renewal date is now June 15.

When deferring, you might want to notify the user by email or within the app to notify them that their billing date has changed.

Handling payment declines

If there are payment issues at the end of a billing cycle, Google will periodically attempt to renew the subscription for some time before canceling. This retry period can last up to 30 days plus any specified grace period length. During this time, Google also sends the user emails and notifications to ask them to update their payment method.

Upon payment decline, the subscription will first enter grace period, if enabled. During the grace period, the user should still have access to the subscription.

After any grace period has ended, the subscription enters account hold for up to 30 days. During account hold, you can block access to the subscription.

To maximize the likelihood of subscription recovery during a payment decline, you can inform your user of a payment issue and ask them to fix it.

You can either do this yourself, as described in the grace period and account hold sections, or you can implement the in-app messaging API, where Google will surface a message to users in your app.

In-app messaging

If you've enabled in-app messaging with InAppMessageCategoryId.TRANSACTIONAL, Google Play will show users messaging during grace period and account hold once per day and provide them an opportunity to fix their payment without leaving the app.

We recommend that you call this API whenever the user opens the app to determine whether the message should be shown.

If the user successfully recovered their subscription, you will receive a response code of SUBSCRIPTION_STATUS_UPDATED along with a purchase token. You should then use this purchase token to call the Google Play Developer API and refresh the subscription status in your app.

Integrate in-app messaging

To show in-app messaging to user, use BillingClient.showInAppMessages().

Here is an example of triggering the in-app messaging flow:

val inAppMessageParams = InAppMessageParams.newBuilder()
        .addInAppMessageCategoryToShow(InAppMessageCategoryId.TRANSACTIONAL)
        .build()

billingClient.showInAppMessages(activity,
        inAppMessageParams,
        object : InAppMessageResponseListener() {
            override fun onInAppMessageResponse(inAppMessageResult: InAppMessageResult) {
                if (inAppMessageResult.responseCode == InAppMessageResponseCode.NO_ACTION_NEEDED) {
                    // The flow has finished and there is no action needed from developers.
                } else if (inAppMessageResult.responseCode
                        == InAppMessageResponseCode.SUBSCRIPTION_STATUS_UPDATED) {
                    // The subscription status changed. For example, a subscription
                    // has been recovered from a suspend state. Developers should
                    // expect the purchase token to be returned with this response
                    // code and use the purchase token with the Google Play
                    // Developer API.
                }
            }
        })

InAppMessageParams inAppMessageParams = InAppMessageParams.newBuilder()
        .addInAppMessageCategoryToShow(InAppMessageCategoryId.TRANSACTIONAL)
        .build();

billingClient.showInAppMessages(activity,
        inAppMessageParams,
        new InAppMessageResponseListener() {
            @Override
            public void onInAppMessageResponse(InAppMessageResult inAppMessageResult) {
                if (inAppMessageResult.responseCode
                        == InAppMessageResponseCode.NO_ACTION_NEEDED) {
                    // The flow has finished and there is no action needed from developers.
                } else if (inAppMessageResult.responseCode
                        == InAppMessageResponseCode.SUBSCRIPTION_STATUS_UPDATED) {
                    // The subscription status changed. For example, a subscription
                    // has been recovered from a suspend state. Developers should
                    // expect the purchase token to be returned with this response
                    // code and use the purchase token with the Google Play
                    // Developer API.
                }
            }
        });