Distribution options
Learn what you need to know to share your Stripe Apps with users.
Caution
Publicly distributed apps have new naming restrictions.
Stripe Apps gives you two ways to distribute your apps. You can make them publicly available or share them only with your team members.
Publish your app on the Stripe App Marketplace 
The Stripe App Marketplace is how you share your application with the Stripe user community.
When you publish an app on the App Marketplace, make sure the app complies with all app review requirements. We also recommend reviewing our app listing guidelines for best practices and recommended coding patterns. Stripe reviews all apps to make sure they comply with the published requirements before listing them in the marketplace.
Stripe can only support English language listings at this time. To support additional languages, reach out to Stripe.
The publishing process consists of these steps:
- Select the version of the app that you want to publish.
- Create an app listing that provides prospective users with information about your app and defines how your app appears in the App Marketplace.
- Submit the application for review.
- Publish the app to the App Marketplace.
For more information, learn how to publish your app.
Share your app with team members
With Stripe Apps, you have the option of sharing your app only with team members. For example, you might develop an app that sends sale data into your own custom accounting system. Or you might build an app that connects paid orders with your fulfillment system. For these and other situations, you can make the application only available to team members of your Stripe account.
Unlike apps on the App Marketplace, apps shared with team members don’t go through a review process. However, we recommend reviewing our app review requirements and app listing guidelines when you build your app.
Sharing your app with team members consists of these steps:
- Specify that you want to share your app only with members of your Stripe account.
- Select the version of the app that you want to upload and make available.
If you later decide you want to publish your app on the Stripe App Marketplace, you must uninstall your app in live mode first.
Setting the distribution type for your app
To set the distribution type for your app, run the following command:
stripe apps set distribution public
stripe apps set distribution private
This updates the app manifest to reflect the distribution type. The new distribution takes effect after you upload your app. The private distribution type is the default type, which you don’t need to explicitly set.
Caution
You can continue to change the distribution type until you upload an app. After you upload an app with a public distribution, you can’t set a public distribution for another app within the same Stripe account. You can change the distribution type from private to public if there are no other public apps within the same Stripe account.
Updated app manifest:
App name restrictions
Beginning in September 2024, Stripe apps with a public distribution type can’t contain the words “Stripe”, “app”, “free” or “paid” in their names.
This update won’t impact your previously uploaded or published versions. However, the Stripe CLI and Stripe Dashboard will prompt you to change your app’s name in the manifest if:
- You upload a new app version with a restricted name and
distribution_set totype public. - You select a previous app version that contains a restricted name to distribute with external testing.
- You submit to the Stripe App Marketplace an app version with a restricted name.
In all these cases, you can proceed by removing the banned words from your app name in the manifest and uploading a new version.
For external testing or the App Marketplace, select that version (or any other version without the restricted name) for distribution.