Stripe: downgrade a user at "period end"

Question

Is it possible to downgrade a user at period end instead of immediately? I've combed through the API Docs but haven't been able to figure out how to accomplish this.

As a workaround I'm currently immediately canceling the user's subscription, then subscribing them to the lesser subscription, trialing until the end of the month. This won't work though - I need to be able to delay the downgrade until the period end (but "record" it w/ Stripe at the time the downgrade is requested).

Clearly there are ways to accomplish this with webhook callbacks and by tracking user subscriptions locally but I'd like to avoid that if possible.

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EDIT

Before anyone asks - I'm using Temboo's PHP SDK. However I'm not looking for a language-specific approach, just a high level how-to (if it's possible).

Answer 1

As @Safinn and @Martin have mentioned, you can cancel the subscription using at_period_end: true to action the cancellation on a specific date.

In order to downgrade to a different plan, the way I get around it is to do the above and then create a free trial of the new plan ending on the same date/time. This way the old plan will be cancelled on the same date that the new plan's trial will end (causing it to be active).

This lets Stripe handle the downgrade entirely their end (which should be more straightforward IMHO), rather than setting up webhooks or tracking dates in your database.