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What does the RevenueDot webhook event RENEWAL mean?

The RevenueDot webhook event RENEWAL means a subscription started a new paid period, whether by renewing, converting from a trial or coming back.

Quick facts#
Event RENEWAL
Where RevenueDot webhook (event.type), RevenueCat's webhook format
Sent to Every enabled webhook whose filters match
Fields that are specific to it is_trial_conversion
What it means A new paid period: a renewal, a trial converting (is_trial_conversion: true), a lapsed customer resubscribing, or a recovered billing issue.

When it is sent#

  • The store reports a new transaction on a chain RevenueDot already holds, with a later period start.
  • is_trial_conversion is true for the first paid period after a free trial.
  • A recovered billing issue and a resubscribe after expiry also come out as RENEWAL, as in RevenueCat.

What your server should do#

  1. Extend the entitlements to the new expiration_at_ms.
  2. Count the revenue from price, which is the money that moved on this period.
  3. Use is_trial_conversion to measure trial conversion.
  4. Deduplicate on event.id: deliveries can repeat, because anything but HTTP 200 is retried after 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 minutes.

Example#

JavaScript
import { createHmac, timingSafeEqual } from "node:crypto";

// X-RevenueCat-Webhook-Signature: t=<unix seconds>,v1=<hex HMAC-SHA256 of "<t>.<raw body>">
function verify(rawBody, header, secret, toleranceSeconds = 300) {
  const m = /^t=(\d+),v1=([0-9a-f]{64})$/.exec(header ?? "");
  if (!m || Math.abs(Date.now() / 1000 - Number(m[1])) > toleranceSeconds) return false;
  const expected = createHmac("sha256", secret).update(`${m[1]}.${rawBody}`).digest();
  return timingSafeEqual(expected, Buffer.from(m[2], "hex"));
}

// Sign a sample delivery the way RevenueDot does, then handle it.
const secret = "whsec_test_secret";
const rawBody = JSON.stringify({ api_version: "1.0", event: {"id":"66339910-3BFF-49F4-B873-D1283D673DE2","type":"RENEWAL","app_user_id":"user_1","product_id":"pro_monthly","is_trial_conversion":false,"price":9.99} });
const t = Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000);
const header = `t=${t},v1=${createHmac("sha256", secret).update(`${t}.${rawBody}`).digest("hex")}`;

const seen = new Set(); // use a database table in production

function handle(rawBody, header) {
  if (!verify(rawBody, header, secret)) return "401 bad signature";
  const { event } = JSON.parse(rawBody);
  if (seen.has(event.id)) return "200 duplicate";
  seen.add(event.id);
  if (event.type !== "RENEWAL") return "200 ignored";
  return event.is_trial_conversion ? "extend access, count a trial conversion" : "extend access to the new expiration_at_ms";
}

console.log(handle(rawBody, header));

Run-checked: npm run check:snippets runs this snippet with Node and compares its output with extend access (checked 2026-10-03).

How RevenueDot produces it#

diffSubscription returns RENEWAL when the new state has a later period start and a different store transaction ID than the stored one. isTrialConversion is set when the stored period was a trial and the new one is not. An upgrade that starts a new period also adds RENEWAL after its PRODUCT_CHANGE.

Source#

Checked: 2026-10-03

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