Billing retry

The state after a renewal charge fails (and any grace period ends): access has lapsed, but Apple keeps retrying the payment for up to ~60 days and the subscription can recover without user action. It's neither active nor churned. Pipelines that count it as either overstate one number and understate the other.

Apple's documentation puts the window at 60 days: it continues retrying until the customer fixes their billing information, cancels, or those 60 days run out, whichever comes first.

The two exits are both notifications. Recovery arrives as DID_RENEW with the subtype BILLING_RECOVERY. Giving up arrives as EXPIRED with the subtype BILLING_RETRY, and that is the point the subscriber has actually churned.

This is involuntary churn, and it responds to things voluntary churn does not: a card-update prompt, a dunning email, an in-app banner. It is worth measuring separately for exactly that reason.

See: How billing retry is counted →