---
title: Pausing and resuming
description: Suspend billing for a while, then pick up where you left off.
domain: subscription
status: shipped
visibility: public
last_verified: 2026-07-12
order: 30
---
Pausing suspends an active subscription. While it is paused, no invoices go out. Resuming brings it back to active. Use it for a customer taking a break who you expect to return, instead of cancelling and starting over.

## Pausing

You can pause any active subscription. A pause can be:

- **Indefinite:** it stays paused until you resume it by hand.
- **Until a date:** it resumes on its own when that date arrives.

Only an active subscription can be paused. A trialing subscription has not started billing, and a cancelling one is already on its way out, so neither can be paused.

## Resuming and what gets billed

When a subscription resumes, you have to decide what happens to the time it spent paused. yRecurring has two billing models for this, set once for your whole organization:

**Slide (the default).** The billing dates move forward by exactly the length of the pause. The customer does not pay for the paused time, and their renewal lands the same distance later. A customer paused for 10 days simply gets 10 more days before their next bill.

**Invoice.** What happens depends on whether the paid period ran out during the pause:

- If the paid period was still running when they resume, they carry on inside it. No new charge.
- If the paid period ended while they were paused, resuming starts a fresh full period and bills it right away.

Slide is the forgiving choice: nobody pays for time they could not use. Invoice suits businesses that treat a long pause as the end of the paid period.

This is an organization setting, and slide is the default. You change it for your whole organization under Settings, on the billing behavior preferences ([open settings](https://app.yrecurring.com/settings/preferences) if you are signed in). It decides what every resume does, so switching it changes how paused time is billed across all your subscriptions.

## On calendar billing

If your organization uses [calendar billing](/guide/billing-timing/anniversary-and-calendar-billing), a subscription bills on a fixed day of the month. A pause shifts the dates forward, so the subscription resumes off that day. The next renewal snaps it back to the aligned day with a short realignment period.

> [!NOTE]
> On calendar billing, resuming is not always free under slide. The subscription lands off its fixed day, so the next renewal includes a short realignment period. That short period is billed by your stub policy (prorate by default), the same rule a signup stub follows.

## Worked example

A customer on a $30 per month plan pauses on June 10 and resumes on June 20, a 10-day pause.

- **Under slide:** every date shifts 10 days later. If their renewal was July 1, it is now July 11. No extra charge for the pause.
- **Under invoice, still in term:** they resume inside the June period, no charge.
- **Under invoice, term lapsed:** a fresh month starts on June 20 and is billed then.

## In the API

Pause a subscription with `POST /v1/subscriptions/{id}/pause`, optionally with a date to resume on, and bring it back with `POST /v1/subscriptions/{id}/resume`. See the [API reference](/reference).

## Edge cases

- **Auto-resume uses the scheduled date, not the moment the system happens to check.** If you paused until June 20, billing is figured from June 20 even if the resume is processed a little later.
- **No invoices during a pause.** Renewals do not fire while paused. They pick back up on resume.