Guide · facts checked 4 Nov 2026

Pause, discount or downgrade: which cancel offer to make

Offer a pause when the customer is not using the product, a time-limited discount when the price is the problem, and a cheaper plan when they use only part of it. Each gives up different revenue and each is a different Stripe change, so pick by the reason and set a limit before you ship the offer.

The three offers side by side

	Pause	Discount	Downgrade
Best for the reason	Unused; seasonal; between projects	Too expensive	Too expensive; using only part of it
What you give up	Revenue for the paused weeks	The discounted share of each invoice in the offer	The difference between the plans, every month after
Risk	It becomes a slow cancel if nobody comes back	The discount becomes the price the customer expects	You lock in the lower plan
Stripe mechanism	Pause, or `pause_collection`	A coupon with a duration	A plan change scheduled at period end

A pause: how Stripe does it

Stripe has two different pause mechanisms, and which one you use decides whether the customer keeps access.

Pause subscriptions. Stripe stops service delivery and invoices for the subscription, and the pause takes effect immediately. It needs the subscription to use flexible billing mode.
pause_collection. The subscription stays active while Stripe stops collecting payment. You choose what happens to the invoices that would have been charged (keep_as_draft, mark_uncollectible or void) and can set a resumes_at date.

Stripe added pausing to the customer portal in API version 2026-10-28.endive. Decide first whether the customer keeps using the product while paused. If they do not, a pause with a resume date is the honest version of “I do not need this right now”. If you keep the product open, you have given a free period, which is a discount.

Stripe's retention rules offer two kinds of offer, a discount or a lower-tier plan. A pause is not one of them, so a pause offer is your own flow's job.

A discount: how Stripe does it

A discount is a Stripe coupon, a percentage or a fixed amount. Its duration decides the cost: once applies to one invoice, repeating to a number of months you set, forever to every invoice.

In Stripe's retention rules, a coupon used through a retention offer is limited to one use per customer. A customer who already used a retention discount on a subscription does not see the same offer again. If you build the flow yourself, you need the same rule or one customer can cancel for a coupon every month.

Prefer repeating with a short term. forever is a permanent price cut for the reason someone gave on one bad day.

A downgrade: how Stripe does it

In retention rules, if the customer accepts a lower-tier offer, Stripe schedules the move to the new plan at the end of the current billing period instead of cancelling. Before you can use downgrade offers, add marketing features to the product in your catalogue: Stripe shows them to the customer so they can judge the offer, and without them the offer has no feature list.

One branch of a rule can offer a discount or a lower plan, not both. If you want to offer both, you need two branches with different conditions, or your own flow.

What each costs: one illustrative example

Illustrative arithmetic, not measured data. A $29-a-month plan, and a customer who has said they will cancel today.

Offer	You collect over the next 3 months	Then
No offer; they cancel	$0	$0
30% off for 3 months	3 × $20.30 = $60.90	$29 a month if they stay
Downgrade to a $12 plan	3 × $12 = $36	$12 a month; you can offer the upgrade later
Pause 2 months, resume	$29 (month 3 only)	$29 a month if they resume

Each one beats a cancellation if the customer would really have left. Each one costs revenue if the customer would have stayed anyway. That is the case for measuring with a holdout rather than counting accepted offers: what counts as a save.

Set the limits before the offer ships

The deepest discount you will give and for how many months.
The longest pause, and whether the customer keeps access during it.
Who gets no offer: customers in their first month, customers who used an offer in the last 90 days, anyone who has said they are leaving over a bug.
A “Cancel anyway” button on every offer screen. A flow without one is a trap, not an offer.

The cancel reasons guide has the table that links each reason to an offer.

See which offer a subscriber gets and why

Run a sample cancel session: give a reason and see whether you are offered a pause, a discount, a downgrade or nothing, with the Stripe change each would make.

Try a cancel session Start free

90 seconds, no sign-up. You play the subscriber; the AI answers, and “Cancel anyway” is always one click away.