Free Period

Free Period lets you extend the first term of a paid subscription by a fixed number of days, weeks, months, or years. Unlike a trial period, which is configured on the plan and places the subscription in In Trial status, Free Period is set on the subscription at creation time and extends the first term while the subscription remains Active (or moves to Active after any plan trial ends).

Use Free Period when you want to give paid-plan subscribers extra time before their first renewal without treating the subscription as a trial.

How Free Period differs from Trial Period

Free Period and Trial Management apply at different levels and affect subscription status differently.

A subscription can include both a plan trial and a Free Period. When both are present, the trial runs first; Free Period extends the first billing term after the trial ends.

Prerequisites and limitations

Review the following before you enable or use Free Period:

• Free Period is available only after Support enables it on your site.
• Free Period is configured while creating a subscription, not on the plan.
• Free Period is not supported when calendar billing is enabled.
• Free Period is not supported for gift subscriptions.
• You can edit Free Period only while the subscription is in In Trial status.

Create a subscription with Free Period

To create a subscription with Free Period in the Chargebee user interface, follow the standard subscription creation flow. After Support has enabled the feature, the Free period setting appears in the subscription form.

1. Click Subscriptions > Create New Subscription.

2. Select the customer and add the plan, addons, and other subscription details as needed.

3. In the Billing Info section, locate the Free period setting.

4. Enter the duration and select the unit (days, weeks, months, or years) for the first billing cycle you want to offer free of charge.

   

5. Complete the remaining subscription details and click Create.

Configure Free Period using the API

When creating or updating a subscription through the API, use the free_period and free_period_unit attributes.

Both attributes must be specified together. If you send one without the other, the request is rejected.

The free_period_unit must be compatible with the plan's billing period unit. For example, for a monthly plan you can set free_period_unit to month, week, or day, but not year.

See the Create subscription for Items API and Update subscription for Items API for parameter details.

Subscription behavior during Free Period

When a subscription is created with Free Period:

• The subscription is Active (unless the plan has a trial, in which case it is In Trial until the trial ends).
• The next billing date is calculated with the first term extended by the Free Period.
• An invoice for the extended first term is generated at subscription creation. Payment collection for this invoice and for subsequent renewals follows your site's auto-collection settings.

Subscription behavior after Free Period ends

When the Free Period ends:

• The subscription continues in Active status.
• An invoice is generated for the recurring charges, and payment is collected according to the subscription's auto-collection setting.
• Subsequent renewals follow the plan's normal billing frequency.

Edit or remove Free Period on an existing subscription while in trial

You can change or remove Free Period on a subscription while the subscription is in In Trial status.

To edit Free Period from the Chargebee user interface:

1. Open the subscription and click Change Subscription.
2. Edit the Free period value or remove it.
3. Preview and confirm the change.

Via API, pass free_period and free_period_unit in an update subscription request when the subscription is in In Trial status. If the subscription is Active, these parameters are not accepted.

When you change the plan on an Active subscription, any existing Free Period is cleared.

Subscription Updates during Free Period

If you make changes during the first term of a subscription, the first term includes the Free Period, and any updates account for this extended term. Consider the following example, which shows the first invoice for a monthly plan and addon.

If you add a monthly addon on Jan 30 for $20, the $20 price is prorated over the first term (Jan 1 to Feb 14). The prorated charge is calculated as: Addon price × (number of days remaining in the term ÷ total days in the term), or $20 × 15/45 = $6.67.

Free Period in reports and MRR

The Standard Subscriptions export includes Free period and Free period unit columns for subscriptions that have Free Period configured.

In Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) reports, revenue recognized when a paid-plan subscription moves from a free period to a paid period is included in Free to Paid MRR alongside conversions from free plans to paid plans.