You can create and update products and prices in the Dashboard or through the API.
Some advanced use cases, like creating variable prices, require you to use the API. If you have a large number of products and prices or if you’re building a custom integration with Elements, you need to use the API.
Use the Dashboard to create and manage products and prices if you want to avoid writing code or if you only have a few products and prices. Set up your pricing model in a sandbox and click the Copy to live mode button on the product details page.
Use the API or the Stripe CLI to create and manage products and prices. The API is a direct method that you use for production implementations. The Stripe CLI is a developer tool that helps you build, test, and manage your integration with Stripe directly from your terminal.
The following API steps use a fictional SaaS collaboration tool (Togethere) as an example, where the basic product is a project management dashboard.
Create a product
Create a product and price
Create a product
To create a product in the Dashboard:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Click +Add product.
Enter the Name of your product.
(Optional) Add a Description. The description appears at checkout, on the customer portal, and in quotes.
(Optional) Add an Image of your product. Use a JPEG, PNG, or WEBP file that’s smaller than 2MB. The image appears at checkout.
(Optional) If you’re using Stripe Tax, select a Tax code for your product. See tax codes for more information about the appropriate category for your product.
(Optional) Enter a Statement descriptor. This descriptor overrides any account descriptors for recurring payments. Choose something that your customers would recognize on a bank statement.
(Optional) Enter a Unit label. This describes how you sell your product. For example, if you charge by the seat, enter “seat” so the line item includes “per seat” for the price. Unit labels appear at checkout, and in invoices, receipts, and the customer portal.
Create a price for the product
To save a product in the Dashboard, you must also add at least one price.
The product editor shows the flat-rate pricing model by default. You can create multiple prices or use a different pricing model with the Advanced pricing options.
Select a Pricing model. For more details about recurring pricing models, read the pricing model guide.
Flat-rate pricing: Charge the same price for each unit. If you use this option, select One time or Recurring.
Package pricing: Charge by the package, or group of units, such as charging 25 USD for every 5 units. Purchases are rounded up by default, so a customer buying 8 units pays 50 USD.
Graduated pricing: Use pricing tiers that might result in a different price for some units in an order. For example, you might charge 10 USD per unit for the first 100 units and then 5 USD per unit for the next 50. If you use this option, select the currency for the price and fill in the tier table.
Volume pricing: Charge the same price for each unit based on the total number of units sold. For example, you might charge 10 USD per unit for 50 units, and 7 USD per unit for 100 units. If you use this option, select the currency for the price and fill in the tier table.
Customer chooses price: Let the payer decide on the amount to pay for your product, service, or cause. Customer chooses price is only compatible with Checkout and Payment Links.
Usage-based pricing: Charge your customers based on how much of your service they use during the billing cycle.
(Optional) If you’re selling in multiple currencies, click Add another currency to set how much to charge in each currency.
Select a Billing period for recurring prices. You can add a custom period if none of the drop-down options are what you want.
(Optional) Enter a Price description. Customers don’t see this description.
(Optional) Click Advanced pricing options if you want to create multiple prices for your product.
Click Add product to save the product and price. You can edit both later.
Edit a product
To modify a product in the Dashboard:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu (), then click Edit product.
Make your changes to the product.
Click Save product.
You can also edit products from within the product information page by clicking the overflow menu () or Edit.
Archive a product
If you want to disable a product so that it can’t be added to new invoices or subscriptions, you can archive it. If you archive a product, any existing subscriptions that use the product remain active until they’re canceled and any existing payment links that use the product are deactivated. You can’t delete products that have an associated price, but you can archive them.
To archive a product:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu (), then click Archive product.
To unarchive a product:
Go to the Archived tab on the Product catalog>Overview page.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu (), then click Unarchive product.
You can also unarchive a product from the product information page.
Delete a product
You can only delete products that have no prices associated with them. Alternatively, you can archive a product.
If a product has a price associated with it, you have to delete or archive the price before you can delete the product. Stripe keeps a record of the price and product for historical transactions.
To permanently delete a product:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu (), then click Delete product.
Create a price
You can create single or multiple prices for a product. For example, Togethere may have a “starter” level offered at 10 USD per month, 100 USD per year, or 9 EUR as a one-time purchase.
Note
After you create a price, you can only update its metadata, nickname, and active fields.
To create a price in the Dashboard, you have to create a product first. Then you can create a price:
Select a Pricing model. For more details about recurring pricing models, read the pricing model guide.
Flat-rate pricing: Charge the same price for each unit. If you use this option, select One time or Recurring.
Package pricing: Charge by the package, or group of units, such as charging 25 USD for every 5 units. Purchases are rounded up by default, so a customer buying 8 units pays 50 USD.
Graduated pricing: Use pricing tiers that might result in a different price for some units in an order. For example, you might charge 10 USD per unit for the first 100 units and then 5 USD per unit for the next 50. If you use this option, select the currency for the price and fill in the tier table.
Volume pricing: Charge the same price for each unit based on the total number of units sold. For example, you might charge 10 USD per unit for 50 units, and 7 USD per unit for 100 units. If you use this option, select the currency for the price and fill in the tier table.
Customer chooses price: Let the payer decide on the amount to pay for your product, service, or cause. Customer chooses price is only compatible with Checkout and Payment Links.
Usage-based pricing: Charge your customers based on how much of your service they use during the billing cycle.
(Optional) If you’re selling in multiple currencies, click Add another currency to set how much to charge in each currency.
Select a Billing period for recurring prices. You can add a custom period if none of the drop-down options are what you want.
(Optional) Enter a Price description. Customers don’t see this description.
Click Create price to save the price. You can edit the price later.
Set a default price
A product’s default price is the most common price you want to present to customers. For example, a product could have multiple prices for seasonal sales, but the default is the regular (non-sale) price. If your product only has one price, that is its default price. The default price must be an active Price.
To change your product’s default price in the Dashboard:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu (), then click Edit product.
Under the Price information section, find the price you want to set as the new default price, then click Set as default price.
Click Save product.
To create a new price and make it the new default price in the Dashboard:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify and click on it to open the product information page.
In the Pricing section, click the Add another price button.
Enter your pricing details and select Set as default price. Read more about the fields available when you create a price.
Click Add price.
Lookup keys
Most businesses display pricing information on their website. If these prices are hard-coded and you want to change them, the process is often manual and requires you to deploy new code. To better manage these scenarios, you can use the lookup_key attribute on the Price object. This key allows you to:
Render different prices in your frontend.
Use the rendered price to bill customers.
You can pass a lookup_key when you create a price:
Instead of hard-coding text like 10 USD per month on your pricing page and using a price ID on your backend, you can query for the price using the standard_monthly key and then render that in your frontend:
To improve performance, you might want to add a caching layer to only reload the price occasionally.
When a customer clicks your subscribe or pay button, you pass the price from the GET request above into the Subscriptions API.
Now that you can render different prices, if you decide that you want to start charging new users 20 USD per month rather than 10 USD per month, you only need to create a new price and transfer the lookup key to that new price using transfer_lookup_key=true:
Rounding
Rounding occurs on the line item level of your invoices. For example, if you create a price with unit_amount_decimal = 0.05 and a monthly subscription for that [price] with quantity = 30, rounding occurs after multiplying the quantity by the decimal amount. In this case, the calculated amount for the line item would be 0.05 * 30 = 1.5, which rounds up to 2 cents. If you have multiple line items, each is rounded up before summing up the total amount for the invoice. This ensures that customers are still charged an integer minor unit amount, as decimal amounts only apply for pricing.
Exclusive taxes are added to each line item amount, depending on the tax rate. If you enable automatic taxes, exclusive taxes are applied and rounded on the total of the invoice, including invoice level discounts. If you use manual taxes on either the line item level or the invoice level, you can choose how to apply rounding. Use the invoice settings page in the Dashboard to apply and round taxes for each line item, or apply and round taxes on the invoice subtotal.
Multiple properties can be updated on a price, either in the Dashboard or the API. For example, you can change whether the price is active, or modify its metadata.
Note that you can not change a price’s amount in the API. Instead, we recommend creating a new price for the new amount, switch to the new price’s ID, then update the old price to be inactive.
To modify a price in the Dashboard:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product for the price you want to modify, and click on it
Find the price you want to modify, click the overflow menu (), then click Edit price.
Make your changes to the price. You can add another price at this point.
Click Save.
Archive a price
If you want to disable a price so that it can’t be added to new invoices or subscriptions, you can archive it. If you archive a price, any existing subscriptions that use the price remain active until they’re canceled and any existing payment links that use the product are deactivated.
To archive a price through the Dashboard:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu ().
On the product information page, find the price you want to modify, then click the overflow menu () next to it and click Archive price.
To unarchive a price:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu ().
On the product information page, find the price you want to modify, then click the overflow menu () next to it and click Unarchive price.
Delete a price
You can only delete prices that you’ve never used. Otherwise, you can archive them.
To permanently delete a price in the Dashboard:
Go to More > Product catalog.
Find the product you want to modify, click the overflow menu ().
On the product information page, find the price you want to modify, then click the overflow menu () next to it and click Delete price.
Display pricing information
After creating products and prices, you can embed a pricing table on your website to display pricing information to your customers. When customers choose a subscription option, they’re taken directly to checkout. Configure, customize, and update directly in the Dashboard without writing any code.
Import products and prices
If you have a very large product catalog, use the Products API to import your catalog programmatically. If you’re importing your product catalog to Stripe, you can use anything as your starting data source, like a product management system or CSV file.
Use the Products API to create a product in Stripe for each product in your system. To map products in your system to products in Stripe, assign each product that you import a unique id. For each product, use the Prices API to make a corresponding price. Make sure to store the id of the newly created price. You need to pass this id when you use the products and prices in your integration.
During development, you might need to run this script multiple times for testing. If you use the same Product ID, you’ll see an error stating that a Product with that ID already exists. If you haven’t used the Product yet, you can delete it using the Stripe Dashboard:
Go to the Products Dashboard and find your Product.
In the Pricing section, click the overflow menu () next to the Price and select Delete Price.
Click the overflow menu () at the top of the page, and select Delete Product.
Synchronize products and prices
You might need to run through an import multiple times. You can create a script to test the import and, if you want to, synch your original data source with Stripe. To make your script idempotent and resilient to errors, you can safely try to create the product first, then update it if the product already exists.
To keep your product catalog synchronized with Stripe, use webhooks or other mechanisms to trigger product updates in Stripe. To update a product programmatically, use the following pattern.
First, find the existing price associated with the product with list all prices API to make sure the price still matches your data source. Each product should have exactly one active price.
Next, check whether the decimal amount of the price has changed. The unit_amount_decimalfield displays the unit amount in cents.
If the amount doesn’t match, you have to create a new price. When you create a new price, specify the product ID of the original product, the currency, and the updated unit_amount price.
You can copy products from a testing environment to live mode so that you don’t need to recreate them. Prices associated with the product are also copied over. In the product details page in the Dashboard, click Copy to live mode in the upper right corner.
You can only copy test products to live mode once. If you make updates to the test product after the copy, the live product won’t reflect the changes.
