No-cost orders

You can process no-cost orders for one-off payments with no-cost line items or discounts for 100% off with coupons and customer-facing promotion codes.

Create a Checkout Session with no-cost line items

Create a Price with a unit_amount of 0, and pass it into the line items array of the Checkout Session. See Products and prices for more information on creating prices.

You can also use the price_data parameter of the line_items array to pass in a free price.

If the total amount is 0, Checkout doesn’t collect a payment method from the customer.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][unit_amount]"=0 \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][product_data][name]"="Free t-shirt" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][currency]"=usd \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \
  -d mode=payment \
  --data-urlencode success_url="https://example.com/success" \
  --data-urlencode cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

If the customer property isn’t set, the Checkout Session automatically creates a new Customer object. This means guest customers aren’t supported.

Create a discount

Alternatively, create a coupon and a promotion code to allow customers to complete orders for free.

Create a coupon

Create a Coupon that makes your Checkout Session free. For example, you can create a 100% off coupon.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/coupons \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d percent_off=100 \
  -d duration=once

To create a session with an applied discount, pass the coupon ID in the coupon parameter of the discounts array.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][unit_amount]"=2000 \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][product_data][name]"=T-shirt \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][currency]"=usd \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "discounts[0][coupon]"=
{{COUPON_ID}} \
  -d mode=payment \
  --data-urlencode success_url="https://example.com/success" \
  --data-urlencode cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

You can also create a free Checkout Session by applying a coupon for an amount equal to or exceeding the Checkout Session total.

Create a promotion code

Promotion codes are customer-facing codes created on top of coupons. You can share these codes with customers who can enter them into Checkout to apply a discount. Create a promotion code from a 100% off coupon to allow customers to create orders for free.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/promotion_codes \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d coupon=
{{COUPON_ID}} \
  -d code=FREECODE

Enable user-redeemable promotion codes using the allow_promotion_codes parameter in a Checkout Session. This enables a field in Checkout to allow users to enter promotion codes.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u "
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
:" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][unit_amount]"=2000 \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][product_data][name]"=T-shirt \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][currency]"=usd \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \
  -d mode=payment \
  -d allow_promotion_codes=true \
  --data-urlencode success_url="https://example.com/success" \
  --data-urlencode cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

Customers can also check out for free if they apply a promotion code for an amount equal to or exceeding the Checkout Session total. For more ways to apply discounts, see Add discounts.

Handle completed orders

After the Checkout Session completes, you can make a request for the finalised line items and their quantities. If your customer removes a line item, it also removes it from the line items response. See the Fulfilment guide to learn how to create an event handler to handle completed Checkout Sessions.

You can see your completed no-cost orders in the Dashboard. The no-cost orders tab only appears if you have at least one completed no-cost order.