Billing cycles
Monthly, yearly, and lifetime — and what each means for renewals and reporting.
Every plan has one of three billing cycles. The choice affects renewals, the update window, and how the plan appears in analytics.
Monthly#
Paddle bills every month and sends a subscription.updated webhook on each renewal, which pushes the current period end forward and extends the update window.
Only monthly plans with active subscriptions contribute to the MRR figure on the analytics screen.
Yearly#
The same mechanics on a twelve-month cadence. Yearly plans do not feed the MRR figure; look at revenue over time for their contribution.
Lifetime#
A single payment with no renewal. The subscription is created active and stays active — there is no period end to expire.
Lifetime access is not the same as lifetime updates. The update window is still governed by the plan’s update days. A lifetime plan with 365 update days lets the customer use the software forever but download new releases only for the first year. To offer genuinely unlimited updates, set update days to something effectively unbounded.
This is worth stating plainly on your own pricing page — it is the single most common source of confusion for buyers of lifetime deals.
Which to offer#
Nothing stops you offering all three for the same product. Monthly and yearly plans give you predictable revenue; lifetime plans convert better on marketplaces. Analytics reports them side by side so you can see the trade-off in your own numbers.