# Modify subscriptions

Change existing subscriptions to cancel, pause, apply prorated charges and credits, and more.

You can modify active subscriptions without canceling and recreating them. You can also set up the [customer portal](https://docs.stripe.com/customer-management.md) to let customers manage their own subscriptions directly. The use cases below cover each type of change. See [Billing updates](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/change.md#billing-updates) for how modifications affect invoices and prorations.

## Use cases

[Change billing period](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/billing-cycle.md): Adjust the billing date for subscriptions.

[Change prices](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/change-price.md): Upgrade and downgrade subscriptions by changing the price.

[Cancel active subscriptions](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/cancel.md): Manually cancel your customers’ subscriptions.

[Pause payment collection](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/pause-payment.md): Temporarily stop collecting payments from your customers.

[Apply discounts](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/coupons.md): Add discounts to subscriptions using coupons and promotion codes.

[Use trial periods](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/trials.md): Delay payments on active subscriptions using trial periods.

[Set quantities](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/quantities.md): Subscribe a customer to multiple quantities of a product.

[Collect taxes](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/taxes/collect-taxes.md): Collect and report taxes with Stripe Billing and Stripe Tax.

[Set payment methods](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/payment-methods-setting.md): Specify which payment methods to allow for a subscription.

[Manage prorations](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/prorations.md): Handle prorations for modified subscriptions.

## Billing updates

Not all subscription changes affect billing or generate prorations:

- **Billing-related updates** create prorations and can generate invoices. These include changing prices, quantities, billing periods, or adding or removing subscription items.
- **Non-billing updates** apply immediately without prorations. These include updating metadata, payment methods, tax settings, or [applying or removing discounts](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/coupons.md#update-a-subscription).

For changes that automatically create a new [subscription invoice](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/invoices/subscription.md), use [pending updates](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/pending-updates.md) so that the updates are only applied if the new invoice is successfully paid.

To see billing impacts before making changes, [preview prorations](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/prorations.md#preview-proration).

### Configuration updates

Configuration updates, like metadata and payment methods, don’t generate invoices with `proration_behavior=always_invoice` because they don’t change the amount owed for the current billing period. For a complete list, see [What doesn’t trigger prorations](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/prorations.md#no-prorations).

### Discounts

Updating only coupons or promotion codes doesn’t create proration invoice items. The new discount applies to the next invoice.

However, if you combine a non-prorating discount change with a proration-triggering update in the same API call (for example, changing an item quantity and modifying a discount), Stripe calculates the proration using the updated discount state. See [Discount changes and prorations](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/prorations.md#discount-changes-and-prorations) for details.