---
title: "What does the Google Play notification SUBSCRIPTION_RESTARTED mean?"
description: "SUBSCRIPTION_RESTARTED (7) means the customer restored a cancelled subscription from Play before it expired. It keeps its purchase token and renews again."
url: https://revenuedot.app/docs/notifications/google-subscription-restarted
---

# What does the Google Play notification SUBSCRIPTION_RESTARTED mean?

The Google Play notification SUBSCRIPTION_RESTARTED means a customer undid a cancellation before the subscription expired.

## Quick facts

| | |
|---|---|
| Notification | `subscriptionNotification.notificationType` 7, `SUBSCRIPTION_RESTARTED` |
| Where | Google Play real-time developer notifications (Pub/Sub, `DeveloperNotification`) |
| Sent by | Google Play, as a Cloud Pub/Sub push to your endpoint |
| What Google says | The user restored their subscription from Play, Account, Subscriptions. The subscription was cancelled but had not expired when the user restored it. |

## What triggers it

- The customer tapped Resubscribe on a cancelled subscription that was still running. Google calls this a restore.
- The same purchase token continues and all cancellation fields are cleared.
- After expiry the same action is a new purchase and arrives as `SUBSCRIPTION_PURCHASED`.

## What your server should do

1. Do not trust the message for the state. Google says a notification only tells you the purchase state changed; call the Google Play Developer API (`purchases.subscriptionsv2.get`) with the purchase token to get the full state.
2. Record that the subscription is set to renew again and stop showing restore messages.
3. Do not grant anything new: the customer already has access until `expiryTime`.
4. Stop your win-back flow for this customer.
5. Answer 2xx once you have handled the message, and skip a `messageId` you have seen: Google recommends checking the uniqueness of message IDs so a redelivery does not make a second API call.

## Example

```javascript
// A Pub/Sub push body: the notification is base64 JSON in message.data.
const body = { message: { messageId: "136969346945", data: Buffer.from(JSON.stringify({"version":"1.0","packageName":"com.example.app","eventTimeMillis":"1790800914000","subscriptionNotification":{"version":"1.0","notificationType":7,"purchaseToken":"PURCHASE_TOKEN"}})).toString("base64") } };

function decide(body) {
  const n = JSON.parse(Buffer.from(body.message.data, "base64").toString("utf8"));
  if (!(n.subscriptionNotification?.notificationType === 7)) return "ignore";
  return "mark as renewing, stop restore messages";
}

console.log(decide(body));
```

*Run-checked: `npm run check:snippets` runs this snippet with Node and compares its output with `mark as renewing` (checked 2026-10-03).*

## How RevenueDot handles it

RevenueDot answers every handled message with 2xx and every temporary failure with 5xx so Pub/Sub redelivers it. For subscription types it re-reads the subscription from Google with `purchases.subscriptionsv2.get` and applies that state, and it acknowledges a new purchase if the app has not. A purchase RevenueDot has not seen is applied only when the app's **Track new purchases from server-to-server notifications** setting is on. The cancellation is cleared on the stored purchase and RevenueDot sends `UNCANCELLATION`.

## Related

- [What does the Google Play notification SUBSCRIPTION_CANCELED mean?](https://revenuedot.app/docs/notifications/google-subscription-canceled.md)
- [What does the Google Play notification SUBSCRIPTION_PURCHASED mean?](https://revenuedot.app/docs/notifications/google-subscription-purchased.md)
- [What does the Google Play notification SUBSCRIPTION_RENEWED mean?](https://revenuedot.app/docs/notifications/google-subscription-renewed.md)
- [Which webhook events does RevenueDot send?](https://revenuedot.app/docs/api/webhook-events.md)
- [Set up Google Play notifications in RevenueDot](https://revenuedot.app/docs/guides/google-play.md)

## Source

- [Google: Real-time developer notifications reference guide](https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/rtdn-reference)
- [Google: Subscription lifecycle](https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/lifecycle/subscriptions)
- [RevenueDot server: stores/google/notifications.ts (how the message is received)](https://github.com/revenuedot/revenuedot/blob/main/apps/server/src/stores/google/notifications.ts)
- [RevenueDot server: stores/google/sync.ts (how the purchase is re-read and applied)](https://github.com/revenuedot/revenuedot/blob/main/apps/server/src/stores/google/sync.ts)
- [RevenueDot server: stores/google/map.ts (how Google's state becomes a stored purchase)](https://github.com/revenuedot/revenuedot/blob/main/apps/server/src/stores/google/map.ts)
- [RevenueDot core: events.ts (how a change becomes a webhook event)](https://github.com/revenuedot/revenuedot/blob/main/packages/core/src/events.ts)

Checked: 2026-10-03