subscription.activated
A paid subscription is acquired.
When this fires
On the first successful payment for a subscription, across every payment provider: Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, Razorpay, Skrill, CeyPay, and CoinPayments. It covers both recurring subscriptions and one-time (non-recurring) passes.
It fires once per subscription, at acquisition. It is not a general "became active" signal:
| Transition | Event actually emitted |
|---|---|
| First paid checkout | subscription.activated |
| Recurring renewal charge | subscription.renewed |
| Paused → resumed | subscription.unpaused |
Cancelled → reinstated before ends_at | subscription.reactivated |
| Past-due → collected | subscription.renewed |
| Trial → paying | member.converted |
| Access code / cardless trial | subscription.created |
A Stripe subscription that begins in a trial still emits subscription.activated at acquisition, because the provider creates the subscription at that moment. The later trial-to-paid transition emits member.converted only.
This is the paid-acquisition event. If you only subscribe to one subscription event for a paying audience, subscribe to this one, not
subscription.created, which never fires for paid checkouts.
data.provider is never access_code on this event; code redemptions emit subscription.created instead.
Caveats
- Once per subscription. Stripe and PayPal de-duplicate with a persistent guard key; the remaining providers emit only on the non-renewal branch of their payment handler. Renewals never re-emit it.
- To capture every acquisition path (paid, comped code, and cardless trial) subscribe to both
subscription.activatedandsubscription.created, then de-duplicate ondata.subscription_id. - Paid acquisitions do not emit
member.joined. That event is access-code-only. Usesubscription.activatedas the paid-audience join signal. payment.succeededfires for the same charge and carries the amount, currency, and external payment id, which this event does not.- The
POST /v1/webhook-endpoints/{endpoint}/testendpoint sends a syntheticsubscription.createdpayload, neversubscription.activated. Testing an endpoint does not exercise this event.
Related events
subscription.created: the zero-payment acquisition equivalent.payment.succeeded: the charge behind this activation.subscription.renewed: every subsequent cycle.member.converted: trial-to-paying transition.
Header Parameters
t=<unix seconds>,v1=<hex>: the HMAC-SHA256 of "<t>.<raw body>" under the endpoint's secret. Verify it before acting, and refuse a t more than 300 seconds from now. During a secret rotation a v0= signature under the previous secret may precede v1=.
The event's ULID, bare. The envelope's id is the same ULID prefixed evt_, so strip the prefix before comparing. Deduplicate on it: a retry carries the same id.
The event name, the same as the envelope's type.
Always application/json.
Always Subscriby-Webhooks/1.0.
Request Body
application/json
The signed JSON envelope posted to your endpoint.
TypeScript Definitions
Use the request body type in TypeScript.
The envelope every event is delivered in.
Response Body
Example Requests
/subscription.activatedHow is this guide?