Entitlements

Entitlements are the features, limits, and access a customer is granted by their plan. They're the bridge between billing and product: a subscription says what a customer pays for, and entitlements say what they can actually do — which features unlock, how many seats or API calls they get, and what's gated behind an upgrade.

How entitlements work

You attach features to a Product, so any customer subscribed to a Price for that product inherits those features. Stripe's entitlements API then exposes an "active entitlements" summary per customer that your application checks at runtime to grant or deny access.

• Boolean features — a capability is simply on or off (e.g. "priority support," "SSO").
• Metered limits — a quantitative cap like "10,000 API calls" or "3 projects," often paired with usage-based billing.
• Live sync — when a subscription changes, entitlements update, so a downgrade removes access and an upgrade grants it.

Why it matters

Without entitlements, teams hard-code plan logic (if plan == "pro") throughout their app — brittle and painful to change. A dedicated entitlements layer lets you define what each plan includes in one place and check access consistently everywhere. It also keeps billing and product honest with each other: a customer whose payment lapses can lose access automatically, and a trial period can grant full entitlements that scale back if the trial doesn't convert.

What to keep in mind

• Grace on failure — decide whether access ends immediately on a failed payment or after a grace window.
• Cache carefully — entitlement checks run constantly, so cache them, but invalidate on subscription changes.