Best way to skip a payment with Stripe Subscriptions (give a free month)?

Question

I am looking to implement a referral program for our app that will gives users a free month off their subscription every time they have a successful referral.

I came across this question Stripe: add free days to a subscription but it is 6 years old so I am not sure if this is still the way to go since Stripe has updated their service and API multiple times since then.

Reading through the Stripe Docs it seems there may be 2 ways to implement:

1. Use a coupon and apply it against the customer's subscription. (Stripe Subscription Discounts)

2. Move the date for their billing cycle by 1 month (Stripe Subscription Billing Cycles)

I would imagine this is a common thing. Is there a best practice on how to proceed?

Answer 1

I ended up contacting Stripe customer support and option 1 is the way to go (coupons).

Basically you create a coupon that deducts 100% of the subscription fee and you enable it for 1 month only. This will effectively skip 1 month's payment. It can be enabled manually via the Stripe Dashboard or the API.

Follow this link for more details: Stripe Coupons