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 have 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 Your account from the left navigation, then select Settings
2. Select Billing and payouts
3. Click the Pause billing 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!

Considerations for pausing membership billing

• On Subscription Billing:
  • New members who join while your page is paused will be charged upfront. This allows creators to continue earning from new members during a billing pause while granting them immediate access to posts, work, and community. Please note that members will not have their membership extended. Their billing cycle will resume once you reactivate billing
    • Example: If you pause billing in December, new members who join during that month will still be charged upfront and gain full access to your content
  • New members are only charged when they first join. They won’t be charged again unless billing is resumed. The pause only stops renewals for existing members
• Impact on billing dates and charges:
  • Pausing billing prevents members from being charged but does not change their billing date
  • Once a billing cycle has been paused, you cannot retroactively charge members for any paused period
• For Creators with Digital Shops (Commerce):
  • Pausing membership billing does not affect your Shop. Customers can still access and purchase digital products
• Member Access During a Pause:
  • Members retain access to your Patreon and all posts while billing is paused. Your Patreon remains live, but existing paid members aren’t billed while billing is paused. Memberships aren’t extended: members resume billing once the pause ends.
• Pausing Multiple Months:
  • To pause multiple consecutive months, you’ll need to log in after the current pause month ends and request to pause again
  • For subscription billing creators, this depends on your pause date. Example: If you pause on March 10, you’ll need to log in after April 10 to pause again
  • For monthly billing, you can log in after the pause ends (after the 1st of the next month) to request another pause
• Resuming Billing:
  • You can choose to resume billing at any time before your pause month ends

How do I resume membership billing?

Existing members will not be charged for 1 month starting from the day you pause. Billing automatically resumes on or around the same calendar day the following month (for example, if you pause on July 5, billing resumes on August 5). Memberships aren’t extended during the pause.

1. While logged in, click on Your account in the left navigation and select Settings
2. Select Billing and payouts
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.

FAQ

• Your billing stays paused until you review your new tier prices and resume billing. It doesn’t resume automatically after one month. Follow the steps in How to move from per-creation to subscription billing.

• If you resume billing before your scheduled pause end date, there’s a chance that billing for some members may still be skipped. This edge case may apply to members who joined using iOS in-app purchases.

  Here’s how it works:

  • Three days before a member’s billing date, we notify Apple to pause the upcoming payment
  • If you resume billing (unpause) within this three-day window, Apple cannot reverse the pause request, and the member’s payment will still be skipped
  • This edge case may result in billing still being skipped for members whose billing dates falls within the three days following the date you resume billing early

  Example Scenario:

  • You pause billing on October 15, with the pause set to end on November 15
  • On November 5, you decide to resume billing early
  • For a member whose billing date is November 6 and who signed up with iOS in-app purchases, their next payment will be skipped. Their billing will resume on December 6 instead

  To avoid skipped payments for members who signed up with iOS in-app purchases, we recommend letting the pause expire naturally or planning your unpause date to avoid overlap with the three-day pre-billing window.
  
  For additional questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to Patreon Product Support.

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

  If you are on the subscription billing model, new members who join while your page is paused will still be charged upfront, giving them immediate access to your content. However, they won’t be charged again until billing resumes. You can learn more about this in the Subscription billing FAQ.

  For the charge-upfront billing model, new members will also pay when they join for access to your catalog of work, and members upgrading their membership will be charged immediately to unlock upgraded benefits.

  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 fulfill 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 pause billing one cycle at a time and return after each cycle to pause again
  2. You can also unpublish your creator page if you want to stop accepting new members and make your page unavailable to the public

  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.

  When new members join while your page is paused, they’ll be charged upfront for immediate access to your content. They won’t be charged again until billing 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 who redeem a gift link you created before pausing billing will continue to have access until the end of their gifted term. However, while your membership is paused, you cannot generate new gift links.
• On the Subscription Billing model, pausing billing does not affect annual memberships — their renewal date stays the same. 
  Example: Say a member has an annual subscription set to end on November 1st, 2025. If you pause your billing cycle in August 2025, their membership will still end on November 1st, 2025
• 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.