Should You Use Stripe Webhooks or Make Stripe API Calls?

Stripe is one of the best payment processing softwares out in the market.

Still, before integrating Stripe into your application you will have to make a big decision about how you’ll be handling critical events such as payments, subscription updates, and payment failures.

The two main approaches to achieve this are-

• Using webhooks
• Making on-demand API calls.

While both these approaches have their strengths and limitations, your choice will largely depend on your application's architecture and the use cases you’ll be covering.

I’ve worked on Stripe myself and this blog is a neat summary of many developer discussions and insights on Reddit and StackOverflow and offers practical guidance on choosing the best approach for your Stripe integration.

What Developers Are Saying

While I was going through a few developer communities, here are some of the few Insights I came across that provided some real-world perspectives on the webhook vs. API debate.

Here's a wonderful analogy I came across that differentiated webhooks from an API call to a developer just beginning to understand the two!

Pro-Webhook Arguments

1. Reliability: Webhooks are more robust for real-time updates. As one developer noted:

“Without webhooks, you risk missing critical events like failed payments or chargebacks.”

2. Ease of Automation: Webhooks make way for immediate automated responses to Stripe events, such as sending confirmation emails or triggering workflow automations.

Pro-API Arguments

1. Database Minimization: As one developer pointed out:

“Why store massive amounts of payment data locally when Stripe can provide it on demand?”

2. Handling Double Payments on Stripe: Idempotencies are very common and Stripe’s Idempotent API in particular has solid measures in place to prevent duplicate payments because how often WiFi servers pop up.

Which Approach Is Best For You?

So who's right? What's the best way?

Pro-API : ‍Getting Payment Details By Making Stripe API Calls

Alternatively, you can use Stripe API calls to poll data when needed.

Instead of storing payment or subscription statuses, your application queries Stripe's API to retrieve the required information in batches through polling.

Here’s a complete rundown on Stripe API docs: Stripe API endpoints

Benefits of making API Calls:

1. Data Volume:
   • APIs can handle larger volumes of data than webhooks.
2. Database Optimization:
   • Reduces the size of your database since payment data is not stored locally.
   • It is very useful for applications that handle a high volume of transactions but only occasionally access this data.
3. Consistency Across Environments:
   • All configurations are in your codebase, so your test and live modes are always synchronized.

Challenges of API Calls:

• Stripe API Call Rate Limits:
  • Stripe imposes API rate limits. Exceeding them could lead to throttling and affect critical operations.For reference: Stripe has a rate limit of upto 100 parallel requests every second for live mode transactions and 25 parallel requests/second on test mode transactions.
• Latency Issues:
  • Each API call introduces a certain degree of network latency that could potentially slow down user interactions and cadences.
• The Threat of being an SPOF:
  • Your application’s uptime will depend on Stripe’s API availability. An API gateway can easily turn out to be a single point of failure (SPOF) if the system's design, implementation, or configuration has a major flaw.

When to Choose API Calls

• You Need On-Demand Data: Use API calls if you only need data sporadically, such as verifying subscription status during login or accessing payment history.
• You Need Security: APIs can support more advanced security protocols, like authentication and authorization, to protect sensitive data.
• You Want Minimal Database Usage: When storage optimization is critical, relying on API calls eliminates the need to store payment data locally.
• You Need More Control Over Data: APIs offer robust data manipulation because you can run “CRUD” operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete) using them.

Pro-Webhook : The Stripe Webhooks Way Of Instant Payment Data

Webhooks are instant server-to-server callbacks that notify your application about specific Stripe events in real-time.

For example - When a payment goes through or if a subscription is cancelled, Stripe can immediately send a webhook to your server (or CRM) to keep you updated.

Benefits of using Webhooks:

1. Real-Time Notifications:
   • Stripe immediately sends payment and subscription data to manage real-time data syncs across billing, CRM, accounting and marketing software.
   • Using webhooks you can do many things!
     Some of which include - triggering email notifications for payments, payment failures, churn; updating subscription statuses, and even handling payment failures or chargebacks.
2. Efficiency:
   • Relying on webhooks means that there’s no need for constant polling via API calls, so this minimizes unnecessary traffic and bandwidth usage.
   • There's no need for heavy configuration as far as webhooks go or any need to worry about retries.
   • Ideal for environments where maintaining minimal configurations is preferred.
3. Reliability:
   • Stripe will automatically retry events even if you manually retry them in case your server is temporarily down.
     • In fact in live mode, Stripe retries delivering any event to your webhook endpoint for as much as 3 days with an exponential back off.
     • In test mode, Stripe retries three times over a few hours. You can view when the next retry will occur in the Events section of the Dashboard.

Challenges with Webhooks:

• They Can’t Handle Traffic Spikes:
  • Webhooks are prone to struggling with handling traffic spikes and large volumes of data.
• There’s no Two-way Communication:
  • Webhooks are strictly one-way communication, so they aren’t suitable for complex integrations that require a two-way communication.
• Security Issues:
  • Webhooks pose quite a few security risks since they use publicly accessible URLs.
• Many Application Don’t Support Webhooks:
  • Because it's resource intensive, many applications don't support them anymore.

When to Choose Webhooks

• You Need Real-Time Alerts: If your application needs instant updates for subscription renewals, payment failures, or event-triggered workflows, webhooks are the clear choice.
• You Need Scalability: Webhooks reduce the number of API calls, making them more suitable to split loads for high-traffic applications.
• You Need To Trigger Quick Automations: They allow you to trigger actions automatically, such as updating subscription statuses or notifying users.

The Verdict - A Hybrid Approach with the Best of Both Worlds

A combined strategy uses the strengths of both webhooks and API calls:

1. Use Webhooks for Critical Events:
   • Handle subscription updates, payment successes, and invoice failures via webhooks to ensure data accuracy.
2. Supplement with API Calls where there's no webhooks:
   • Use on-demand API calls for less frequent tasks, like checking subscription statuses at login or reconciling payment records.

This dual approach can help you make sure your application is resilient, efficient, and user-friendly on the payment side of things.

Why? Because it's always best to get critical system data in real-time. But so is 2-way data communication.

When you plan out your billing systems, it's important that you're able to get that data ASAP with minimal latency and with a high control over data.

Get Real-time Stripe Payment Data Using Konnectify

Both have their advantages and they also come with a lot of challenges from a software development perspective like setup complexity, rate limits, error handling, and ongoing maintenance.

But what if there was a simpler way to integrate Stripe without writing any code?

Integrating Stripe Webhooks and APIs on a No-Code SaaS Integration Platform

Konnectify has a third, coding-free alternative for integrating Stripe into your application:

• Plug-and-Play Webhooks: Automatically handle Stripe webhooks in real time and store payment details without worrying about retries, configurations, or security validations.
• Effortless Stripe API Calls: Automatically query Stripe APIs without rate limit concerns or complex development efforts.
• No Coding Required: Save hours of development time by setting up Stripe integrations with just a few clicks or even better - Generative AI!
• Scalable and Flexible: Get real-time updates or on-demand data on Stripe payments and run payment automations across you billing software and CRM.

Why Choose Konnectify?

1. Get Started for Free: Konnectify’s free plan allows you to explore and implement Stripe integrations without any upfront investment.
2. Eliminate Maintenance: Konnectify manages all the technical complexities of webhooks and APIs, so you can focus on growing your business.
3. Multi-App Integrations: Integrate Stripe with your favorite tools (e.g., Google Sheets, CRMs, or databases) in minutes.

The Easiest Way to Integrate Stripe Connectors

Instead of debating between using Stripe webhooks and making API calls, why not choose the easiest path?

With Konnectify, you get the best of both worlds—bulk data handling using APIs, real-time alerts with webhooks, and billing automations using zero code.

Try Konnectify today for free and discover how simple managing Stripe integrations can be!