Stripe Webhook Idempotency Pattern: One-Page Production Guide
Developer Guide

Stripe Webhook Idempotency Pattern: One-Page Production Guide

A self-contained pattern for retry-safe Stripe webhook handling with Postgres idempotency.

2026-05-24
3 min
Stripe Webhook Idempotency Pattern: One-Page Production Guide

Tweetable Definition#

Webhook reliability equals signature verification plus idempotency plus transactional updates.

Production Risk Warning#

Ignoring retries creates duplicate subscriptions and access drift.

Copy-Ready Snippet#

sql
create table if not exists billing_webhook_events (
  event_id text primary key,
  received_at timestamptz not null default now()
);

One-Page Pattern#

  1. Verify signature from raw body.
  2. Start transaction.
  3. Insert event_id into idempotency table.
  4. If conflict: stop and return success.
  5. Apply billing state mutation.
  6. Commit and log outcome.

Common Pitfall#

Never treat webhook retries as errors; treat them as a normal delivery guarantee.

One email a month — no fluff

RLS gotchas, Next.js cache debugging, and the one Supabase setting that bit me last month.