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Using dynamic pricing to discount subscription orders over time

Relevant to: Shopify Checkout Integration Migrated Shopify Checkout Integration

As of August 2025, Recharge’s Product Subscription Plans let you offer dynamic pricing, providing customers with discounts to subscribe.

This guide explains how to offer customers different discounts based on their order history.

Platform:

  • Shopify Checkout Integration
  • Migrated Shopify Checkout Integration

Before you start

  • If you started using dynamic pricing before August 2025, you may be using the legacy version, which requires both Workflows by Recharge and Product Subscription Plans to offer customers dynamic pricing options. When you create a dynamic pricing plan, Recharge displays in-app messaging or a banner to confirm which dynamic pricing version is available to you.
  • Dynamic pricing is only available for purchases made through your storefront using the Storefront widget. In the subscription plan’s Sales channels settings, Storefront widget is the only compatible channel.
  • The customer portal's delivery schedule or upcoming orders section does not update to reflect future price changes from the dynamic pricing feature.

How it works

Use dynamic pricing to offer customers an alternative product price at checkout that is different from what they pay for their recurring orders. With dynamic pricing, you can offer customers a discount at checkout and have it apply to as many subsequent orders as you'd like, with the price automatically updating for all future recurring orders.

To use dynamic pricing, you must create a Product Subscription Plan for the product in your Recharge merchant portal, using the Subscription with dynamic pricing plan type option. Configure the plan details, including the:

  • Initial discount: The discount customers receive when they check out with the product.
  • Initial discount length: The number of orders to which the initial discount will apply.
    • ie. If your initial discount percentage is set to 20% and the initial discount length is set to 5, then your customers will receive a 20% discount on their first five orders. Set this to 0 if the initial discount only applies to checkout orders.
  • Recurring discount: The discount amount applied to orders after the initial discount period has ended.

Configuring dynamic pricing for your subscription products

Use dynamic pricing to offer a discount at checkout for a specific product, and apply it to a specific number of orders. For example, you could use dynamic pricing to offer a product at a 50% discount for the first five months.

You could then set a discount for the subsequent charges, for example, offering customers a 10% discount after their first five months.

Discounted product pricing is based on the original product pricing configured in Shopify. After creating the product in Shopify, you can set specific discounts to adjust the prices of your subscription products in Recharge. For example, you could offer customers:

  • The product for $100 as a one-time purchase using the one-time product in Shopify
  • The product for $90 at the checkout, and $80 for recurring orders by setting a 10% initial discount and 20% recurring discount when configuring the product subscription plan in Recharge

Follow the instructions below to set dynamic pricing for your subscription products:

  1. Create the product in Shopify.
  2. Click Products in the Recharge merchant portal and select Products from the dropdown to create the subscription plan.
  3. Select the product you want to create a plan for, and then click Add subscription plan.
  4. Select Subscription with dynamic pricing as the plan type, then update the frequency and plan name. The plan name appears in the subscription widget on your storefront.
  5. Set the initial discount percentage to reflect the discount amount customers should receive at checkout.
  6. Set the initial discount length to the number of orders for which the initial discount should apply.
  7. Set the recurring discount percentage to the percentage discount customers should receive when their initial discount finishes.
  8. Optional - open the Charge and cut-off schedule menu to add a cut-off schedule.
  9. Optional - open the Channels menu to configure channel settings.
  10. Select Save when finished.
Note: You cannot change an existing plan type to a dynamic pricing plan. You must add the dynamic pricing plan and remove the existing plan if it is no longer in use.

Considerations

Consider the following when using dynamic pricing:

Consideration

Notes
Product pricing
  • Due to Shopify’s order creation process, you cannot set the cost of the recurring product to an amount higher than the checkout product when creating your products in Shopify (ie. customers cannot check out with a $20 product and then swap to a $40 recurring product).
  • As a workaround, set the checkout product price in Shopify to a specific amount, and then apply the initial discount to the product price at the checkout (ie. if the checkout product is set to $40, you would need to set the initial discount amount to 50% in Recharge if you want customers to pay $20 when they initially checkout with the product).
  • You cannot set this product to available for a one-time purchase.
Bundles
Win Backs
  • Dynamic pricing is not compatible with Win Backs
Multi-currency
Pricing
  • The dynamic pricing amount resets if you or a customer swap the product variant. You must manually update the product price if the customer should still receive the dynamic pricing amount.
Product swaps
  • You cannot swap a product that is configured with dynamic pricing to another product with dynamic pricing. You will see an error message This combination is not available for purchase. Please select a different set of options.
  • Add additional plans that do not use dynamic pricing to allow for product swaps. Be sure to set the product plan settings to not available on the Storefront widget if you do not want the regular subscription plan to display on the storefront.product types
Adding subscription products
  • You cannot add a subscription product to an existing customer's subscription through the merchant portal if you've only assigned a dynamic pricing plan to that product. You can only add these types of products as one-time purchases to existing subscriptions.
Workflows by Recharge
  • Legacy dynamic pricing required a workflow to update product prices for recurring orders. This is no longer necessary. If you upgraded to the new version, however, any workflows you’ve already set up will continue to run as configured.
  • For example, if your subscription price is set to $100, with dynamic pricing adjusting recurring orders to $90, and you have a workflow that changes the price to $80, that workflow will still trigger for any orders meeting its conditions, updating the recurring price to $80.
Customer portal pricing
  • If you configure dynamic pricing to adjust the discount after a recurring order, the customer portal will not display the updated price in advance.
  • The portal continues to show the current subscription price until Recharge processes the next order and applies the discount.
  • If the price change is scheduled for two or more orders in the future, the portal will still only display the current price until the adjustment is queued and takes effect.
Quantity upsells
  • You cannot enable dynamic pricing and quantity upsell plans at the same time. When you activate a quantity upsell plan, Recharge automatically disables dynamic pricing. You cannot re-enable dynamic pricing until you remove the quantity upsell plan.
Post-purchase Cross-Sells
  • Dynamically priced products cannot be used as cross-sell products. However, they can be used as the trigger product for a cross-sell offer.

Frequently asked questions

Can I delete my workflows after enabling dynamic pricing?⌄

Previously, dynamic pricing required a workflow to update product prices for recurring orders. This is no longer necessary, however any workflows you've already set up will continue to run as configured.

You can delete the workflow if the dynamic pricing takes effect right after checkout. For example, if the plan is 30% off the first order and 10% off all recurring orders.

If the dynamic pricing takes effect after a specific recurring order you should not delete the workflow in order for subscriptions created before this update to still receive the discount. For example, 30% off the first 2 orders and 10% off on recurring order after that.

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