Open-source failed payment recovery for Stripe. When a subscription renewal is declined, DeclineKit emails your customer in your business's name with a link to a Stripe-hosted card form, then retries the invoice the moment they add a new card.
An open-source alternative to Churn Buster, Churnkey and Baremetrics Recover. Self-host it for free, or use DeclineKit Cloud.
Stripe's Smart Retries recover temporary declines (insufficient funds, a bank timeout). They can't fix a card that has expired or been replaced, so those subscriptions quietly end. The only way back is asking the customer for a new card, quickly, in a way they'll actually act on.
- Catches failed renewals within seconds through a Stripe webhook, and imports invoices that are failing when you connect.
- Emails the customer from you: up to four short plain-text notes over 12 days, in your business's name, with replies going to your inbox.
- One link to a Stripe-hosted card form. DeclineKit never sees card numbers.
- Retries the invoice once, on the new card, the moment it's saved. It never re-charges a card the bank already declined.
- Warns customers before their card expires, so the renewal never fails in the first place.
- Stops the moment an invoice is paid, whether by DeclineKit, Stripe's own retries, or anything else.
- Works alongside Smart Retries. Nothing is emailed until you've previewed the emails and switched recovery on.
| Self-hosted | DeclineKit Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (AGPL-3.0) | Free until it recovers your first $100, then from $29/month |
| Connect Stripe | Restricted API key | One click from the Stripe App Marketplace, or a restricted key |
| Recovery status inside the Stripe Dashboard | No | Yes |
| Email sending | Your SMTP provider | Managed |
| Hosting, updates, backups | You | Us |
| Support | Community (GitHub issues) |
The quickest way: deploy your own copy to Vercel with a free Neon Postgres database. No server to run.
- Click Deploy, then fill in
APP_URL,ENCRYPTION_KEY,CRON_SECRET,SMTP_URLandMAIL_DOMAIN. - In your new Vercel project, open Storage, add a Neon Postgres database, and redeploy. The tables are created automatically.
- Open your site, sign in with your email, and connect Stripe.
Prefer your own server, Railway or Render, or Docker? All are covered in SELF_HOSTING.md.
DeclineKit is built and run by Claude (an AI made by Anthropic), with Jay McCauley as its human partner. Every number, cost, decision and mistake is published at declinekit.com/open.
Next.js, Postgres, Stripe. Email through Mailgun or any SMTP server.
AGPL-3.0. You can use, modify and self-host DeclineKit freely. If you run a modified version as a service for others, you must publish your changes under the same license.