How to pause billing for your members

This article is intended for creators who offer paid tiers. Whether you’re taking a well-deserved break or had an unexpected delay in delivering benefits, you can put a pause on billing your members for a month at a time. Keep reading to learn more about how to pause and what your paid members can expect.

How do I pause membership billing?

1. While logged in, click on the Settings link from the left navigation
2. Click on the Billing and payouts tab
   • If you’re not seeing this option, click on your profile name in the bottom left corner > click on your creator profile > start at step 1
3. Click the Pause billing cycle button
4. Click the Confirm button to pause the current billing cycle

We’ll display a yellow banner on your account settings page, letting you know that we have paused your billing. A similar message will let members know that they won’t get billed.

Enjoy your break – when you’re ready to come back, we’ll be here!

Important things to note about pausing membership billing

• If you bill upfront, any new paid members who join a paid tier will still be charged when they sign up. Their first payment gives them access to your backlog. If a member upgrades their tier they’ll also be charged immediately to unlock access to the upgraded membership benefits
• If you use subscription billing, new paid members will not be able to sign up while your page is paused
• Pausing your membership billing will only prevent members from being charged, it will not change their billing date (subscription billing)
• Once a billing cycle has been paused, you will not be able to retroactively charge members for any period of time that was paused
• Pausing your membership billing will have no impact on your Shop if you sell digital products with Commerce and pause membership billing, will not impact your Shop. Customers can still access and purchase products from your Shop
• Members will still be able to access your Patreon and posts while your billing is paused – your Patreon is live; we’re just not billing your existing paid members for the month
• If you’d like to pause multiple months in a row, you’ll need to log in after your pause month has ended and request to skip the month again. For subscription billing creators, this will depend on the date that you paused (i.e. if you pause on 10 March, you’ll need to log in after 10 April to pause again). If you bill monthly, you can log in after your month of billing has been paused after the 1st and request to skip the next month
• You can choose to resume billing at any time before your pause month is over

How do I resume membership billing?

If you are charging monthly (non-upfront) or upfront, automatic billing resumes after 1 billing cycle (i.e. the 2nd of the following month).

If you are on a subscription billing model, existing members will not be charged for 1 month starting from the day you pause. Billing automatically resumes on/around the same calendar day the following month. (i.e. if you pause on the 5th of July, billing will resume on the 5th of August).

 If you paused but decide to unpause it within the same month, here’s how you can do that:

1. While logged in, click on the Settings link from the left navigation
2. Click on the Billing and payouts tab
   • If you’re not seeing this option, click on your profile name in the bottom left corner > click on your creator profile > start at step 1
3. Click the Resume (this month) Billing button
4. Click the Confirm button

We recommend letting members know that you’ll be pausing billing for one month. You can do this with a post or by sending a bulk direct message through your Relationship manager.

Frequently asked questions

• We won’t process payments for existing paid members when you pause your membership billing.

  If you are on the subscription billing model, new paid members will not be able to join your paid tiers while you are paused. Learn more about subscription billing here: Subscription billing FAQs

  If you bill upfront, new paid members will still pay when they join for access to your catalogue of work. Additionally, members will be charged when they upgrade their membership since they immediately unlock access to the upgraded membership offerings.

  If you’d like to prevent any earnings or membership changes from happening while you’re paused, you can also set a cap on the number of members you’ll allow in each tier and set the limit to the current member count in each tier. Alternatively, you can unpublish your tiers until you’re ready to accept new members in that tier again. While prospective members could still join with the “No tier/Custom” option, you won’t be obligated to fulfil benefits related to your tiers.

  Here’s how to unpublish a tier:

  1. Navigate to your Membership tiers page, and click the Edit button for the tier you’d like to unpublish
  2. Scroll to the bottom and click the Show more tier options “...” button
  3. Click the Unpublish tier button. Your tier will still be editable, but it won’t populate on your page for fans to choose from

• Patreon’s pausing feature allows you to skip 1 billing cycle. You can continue to enable our pause feature; however, you’ll need to log in each month to re-enable it.

• Once you’ve paused billing, we’re unable to charge your members retroactively.

• If you are taking an indefinite break, you have 2 options:

  1. You can manually pause billing after each billing cycle has been skipped
  2. Or, you can unpublish your creator page. Unpublishing lets you take a break without the worry of needing to re-pause or billing new members if you charge upfront

  Important! If you unpublish your creator page and later republish it, you’ll be subject to Patreon’s current pricing at the time you republish.

  Learn more about publishing your page here: Unpublish my creator page

• Starting from the day you pause your membership billing, existing paid members will not be charged for one month. Billing will automatically resume on/around the same calendar day the following month.

  Billing pauses will only prevent members from being charged. Charge dates are not affected by pausing. When the pause ends, members’ normal billing schedule resumes.

  If you resume billing within a month of when you paused, you won’t be able to go back and charge members whose billing date was skipped while you were paused.

  Fans will not be able to sign up for your paid tiers while you are paused

• Our pause feature works nearly the same; you can pause 1 billing cycle/month at a time. Billing will automatically resume for the next billing cycle. The difference with non-charge upfront billing is that you won’t need to worry about new members getting charged when they join your Patreon signup since new members aren’t charged when they join.

• If you are on the subscription billing model and you pause billing, annual members’ memberships extend by one month if you are on a subscription billing model.

  For example, say a member has an annual subscription set to end on 1 November 2025. If you pause your billing cycle in August 2025, their membership will extend by one month and will now ends on 1 December 2025.

  If you are on a Legacy billing model (monthly and/or charge upfront) and manually resumed billing during a paused month, the extension is retroactively removed.

  For example, say a member has an annual subscription set to end on 1st November 2025. If you pause your billing cycle in August 2025, their membership will not extend by 1 month and ends on 1st November 2025 as expected.

• Our pause feature isn’t available with our per creation billing option because per-creation creators can simply stop publishing paid posts to put a pause on their membership billing.

• Yes! You can still post content even if you’ve paused billing. Members can still access your page and posts during a paused billing cycle. Additionally, you and your members can still interact via comments and direct messages.