How do I create subscriptions?

The moving parts

A subscription flow needs three things working together:

1. Stripe: one or more recurring Price objects (monthly/annual plans).
2. Checkout: a Lovable-built flow that starts a subscription checkout for the chosen price.
3. Your database: a record of each user's current plan and status, kept in sync via webhooks.

Suggested build order

"Add a pricing page with two plans, Basic and Pro, each linking to a Stripe subscription checkout. Store the user's plan and status in a subscriptions table, and update it from a webhook when Stripe confirms payment or cancellation."

1. Create the Price objects in Stripe for each plan.
2. Ask Lovable to build the pricing page and checkout buttons.
3. Ask Lovable to add a subscriptions table (linked to user_id, with plan and status columns) protected by row-level security so users only see their own row.
4. Add a webhook endpoint that listens for Stripe subscription events (created, updated, cancelled) and updates that table.
5. Gate premium features by checking the user's subscription status, not just whether they're logged in.

Handling plan changes and cancellations

Stripe fires webhook events for upgrades, downgrades, failed renewals and cancellations — make sure your webhook handler covers all the statuses you care about, not just the initial signup.

What usually goes wrong

• Only handling the "subscription created" event and ignoring cancellations, so churned users keep access forever.
• Storing subscription status only client-side, which a user could tamper with — always check it server-side (RLS policy or server function) before granting access.
• Testing with Stripe's test clock skipped, so renewal and cancellation logic is never actually exercised before launch.

Subscription billing has enough edge cases (proration, failed payments, dunning) that for anything beyond a simple two-tier plan, PromptSites.com is worth bringing in.