Manual Payment Retry

Manual Retry re-attempts a failed subscription renewal payment when you ask, from the payment’s detail page or through the API. It charges the payment method saved on the subscription, and it runs independently of the automatic Payment Retries schedule.

What Is Manual Retry?

When a renewal payment fails, the subscription moves to on_hold. If you turned on Payment Retries, they re-attempt the charge on a back-off schedule. Sometimes you know the payment will go through now: the customer has confirmed they topped up their account, or your support team is on a call with them. Manual Retry sends one attempt immediately, instead of waiting hours or days for the next scheduled one.

Renewal payments only: Manual Retry applies to subscription renewal invoices while the subscription is on_hold. First payments, one-time payments, plan-change charges, and on-demand charges are not eligible.
No customer action: The charge goes to the payment method already saved on the subscription.
Independent of automatic retries: A manual retry doesn’t use up an attempt from the automatic schedule, doesn’t move the next scheduled retry, and works even when Payment Retries are off.
Retries the invoice, not the payment: The failed payment is only the entry point. Dodo Payments finds the open renewal invoice behind it and charges that debt, so it doesn’t matter which failed payment on the invoice you retry from.

Retrying from the Dashboard

Only users with the Owner or Editor role can send a manual retry.

Open the failed payment

Go to Transactions → Payments and click the failed renewal payment to open its Transaction details page.

Click Retry Payment Manually

Click Retry Payment Manually in the top-right corner. The button is available only while the payment is eligible.

Check the result

Dodo Payments creates a new payment for the attempt, and it appears in the Activity Log. If the charge succeeds, the subscription returns to active, and the next billing date moves to one billing period after the successful retry. If the payment processor hasn’t settled the charge yet, the payment shows as in progress until the payment.succeeded or payment.failed webhook reports the outcome.

Transaction details page for a failed payment showing the error code and message, an Activity Log, and a Retry Payment Manually button — Retry Payment Manually on the transaction details page of a failed renewal

Eligibility

Dodo Payments sends a manual retry only when every check in this table passes. The Reason code column is what the API returns: in reason on GET /payments/{payment_id}/retry, and as the error code on POST /payments/{payment_id}/retry.

Check	Requirement	Reason code
Payment type	A subscription renewal payment whose invoice is still open. Payments with no invoice, first payments, one-time payments, plan-change charges, and on-demand charges cannot be retried.	`PAYMENT_NOT_RETRYABLE`
Subscription status	`on_hold`	`SUBSCRIPTION_INACTIVE`
Scheduled cancellation	The subscription is not scheduled to cancel at the next billing date.	`CHARGE_NOT_ALLOWED_FOR_SCHEDULED_CANCELLATION`
Saved payment method	The subscription has a saved payment method to charge.	`SUBSCRIPTION_HAS_NO_PAYMENT_METHOD`
Last failure	The most recent failure is a soft decline. A hard decline, or a failure with no classified error code, cannot be retried.	`MANUAL_RETRY_HARD_DECLINE`
Nothing in flight	No payment on the invoice is `processing` or still has no recorded status. Such a payment is an attempt, manual or automatic, that was just sent and hasn’t reported back. Wait for its outcome first.	`MANUAL_RETRY_IN_FLIGHT`
Newest payment failed	The most recent payment on the invoice has `failed` status. Any other status, such as `requires_customer_action`, `requires_payment_method`, or `cancelled`, blocks the retry even when nothing is in flight.	`PREVIOUS_PAYMENT_PENDING`
Not already paid	No payment on the invoice has succeeded.	`MANUAL_RETRY_ALREADY_PAID`
Retry limit	Fewer than 3 manual retries were sent on the invoice, and the cooldown has passed. See Retry Limits.	`MANUAL_RETRY_LIMIT_REACHED`
Customer	The customer is not on your blocklist.	`PAYMENT_NOT_RETRYABLE`
Payment connector	For BYOP subscriptions, the connector is enabled.	`BYOP_CONNECTOR_DISABLED`
Live mode	In live mode, your business has live payments enabled.	`MERCHANT_NOT_LIVE`

Manual Retry is narrower than automatic retries in one place: it requires the subscription to be on_hold. A past_due subscription in a grace period fails this check. Automatic retries keep running for other non-active statuses. See Subscription Status Transitions.

Retrying a hard decline against the same card can’t succeed, and repeated declines hurt your authorization rate. When the reason is MANUAL_RETRY_HARD_DECLINE, ask the customer to update their payment method instead. Subscription Dunning does this automatically.

Retry Limits

Each renewal invoice allows 3 manual retries, with a cooldown between them:

Manual retry	Available
1	As soon as the payment is eligible
2	1 hour after the first
3	3 hours after the second

The limits apply in both test mode and live mode. When the limit refuses a retry, the API returns MANUAL_RETRY_LIMIT_REACHED (HTTP 429), and the error body carries only code and message. To learn when the next retry opens, check the retry state and read retry_available_at. It is null once all three retries are spent. Automatic retries don’t count toward this limit, and manual retries don’t count toward the 8 attempts of the automatic schedule.

Manual vs. Automatic Retries

The two retry paths differ in these ways:

	Manual Retry	Payment Retries
Trigger	You, from the dashboard or the API	Dodo Payments, on a back-off schedule
Timing	Immediately	12 hours after the failure, then progressively later
Attempts	3 per invoice, with a 1-hour and then a 3-hour cooldown	Up to 8 per invoice, inside your recovery window
Needs Payment Retries enabled	No	Yes
Effect on the other	None. A manual failure doesn’t schedule or move an automatic attempt.	None. The automatic chain continues regardless of manual sends.
Analytics	Counted in the Payment Retries metrics under Analytics → Recovery	Counted in the same metrics

Retrying via the API

Check eligibility first, then send the retry. Both endpoints take the ID of a failed payment.

Check Whether a Payment Can Be Retried

GET /payments/{payment_id}/retry doesn’t return an error for an ineligible payment. It returns can_retry: false with the reason code instead, so your own dashboard or support tooling can show the same state as the Dodo Payments dashboard. It requires the Viewer role.

import DodoPayments from 'dodopayments';

const client = new DodoPayments({
  bearerToken: process.env.DODO_PAYMENTS_API_KEY,
});

const state = await client.payments.retrieveRetryState('pay_0NmDtkE0iRvmeTcT6t0ol');

if (state.can_retry) {
  console.log(`Retry available. ${state.sends_used}/${state.sends_allowed} used.`);
} else {
  console.log(`Cannot retry: ${state.reason}. Next window: ${state.retry_available_at}`);
}

import os
from dodopayments import DodoPayments

client = DodoPayments(bearer_token=os.environ["DODO_PAYMENTS_API_KEY"])

state = client.payments.retrieve_retry_state("pay_0NmDtkE0iRvmeTcT6t0ol")

if state.can_retry:
    print(f"Retry available. {state.sends_used}/{state.sends_allowed} used.")
else:
    print(f"Cannot retry: {state.reason}. Next window: {state.retry_available_at}")

curl https://live.dodopayments.com/payments/pay_0NmDtkE0iRvmeTcT6t0ol/retry \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DODO_PAYMENTS_API_KEY"

Response

{
  "can_retry": false,
  "reason": "MANUAL_RETRY_LIMIT_REACHED",
  "sends_used": 1,
  "sends_allowed": 3,
  "retry_available_at": "2026-08-26T16:51:00Z"
}

Field	Description
`can_retry`	`true` when a retry would be sent right now.
`reason`	The code the retry would fail with. `null` when `can_retry` is `true`.
`sends_used`	Manual retries already sent on this invoice.
`sends_allowed`	Always `3`.
`retry_available_at`	When the next manual retry opens. `null` when no retry is left, or when the refusal has nothing to do with the cooldown.

Send a Manual Retry

POST /payments/{payment_id}/retry creates a new payment and charges the saved payment method. It requires the Editor role. The SDK examples reuse the client from the previous example.

// `client` is the DodoPayments instance from the previous example.
const retry = await client.payments.retry('pay_0NmDtkE0iRvmeTcT6t0ol');

console.log(retry.payment_id, retry.status);

# `client` is the DodoPayments instance from the previous example.
retry = client.payments.retry("pay_0NmDtkE0iRvmeTcT6t0ol")

print(retry.payment_id, retry.status)

curl -X POST https://live.dodopayments.com/payments/pay_0NmDtkE0iRvmeTcT6t0ol/retry \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DODO_PAYMENTS_API_KEY"

Response

{
  "payment_id": "pay_2IjeQm4hqU6RA4Z4kwDee",
  "invoice_id": "inv_9Kp2mQ7vRt4LxYw3",
  "status": "processing",
  "retry_attempt": 1,
  "is_manual_retry": true,
  "sends_used": 1,
  "sends_allowed": 3,
  "retry_available_at": "2026-08-26T16:51:00Z"
}

Field	Description
`payment_id`	The new payment created for this attempt.
`invoice_id`	The renewal invoice that was charged.
`status`	Outcome of the charge. `processing` means the processor hasn’t settled it yet. `null` means no outcome was recorded before the response was returned. In both cases the payment webhooks report the final result.
`retry_attempt`	Position of this attempt among the manual retries on the invoice, starting at `1`.
`is_manual_retry`	Always `true` on this endpoint.
`sends_used`, `sends_allowed`, `retry_available_at`	Retry limit state after this send. `retry_available_at` is the cooldown clock only. It is set even when this charge succeeds, in which case the invoice is paid and no further retry opens.

Error Responses

When a retry is not allowed, POST returns one of these HTTP statuses:

HTTP status	Codes	What to do
`404`	`NOT_FOUND`	The payment doesn’t belong to your business.
`409`	`MANUAL_RETRY_IN_FLIGHT`, `PREVIOUS_PAYMENT_PENDING`, `CHARGE_NOT_ALLOWED_FOR_SCHEDULED_CANCELLATION`	The block is temporary, or something else must change first. Wait for the in-flight or pending payment to reach a final state, or clear the scheduled cancellation.
`422`	`PAYMENT_NOT_RETRYABLE`, `SUBSCRIPTION_INACTIVE`, `SUBSCRIPTION_HAS_NO_PAYMENT_METHOD`, `MANUAL_RETRY_HARD_DECLINE`, `MANUAL_RETRY_ALREADY_PAID`, `BYOP_CONNECTOR_DISABLED`, `MERCHANT_NOT_LIVE`	This payment can’t be retried. Don’t repeat the call.
`429`	`MANUAL_RETRY_LIMIT_REACHED`	Check the retry state and wait until its `retry_available_at`, or stop once all three retries are spent.

The Error Codes reference describes every code.

Webhooks

A manual retry creates an ordinary payment, so the same webhooks fire as for any renewal attempt:

Event	Fires when
`payment.succeeded`	The retry was charged. `subscription.active` follows when the subscription is reactivated.
`payment.failed`	The retry was declined. The subscription stays `on_hold`, and a manual failure doesn’t schedule an automatic retry.
`payment.processing`	The processor has accepted the charge but hasn’t settled it yet.

On the payment object in these events, retry_attempt is 1 or higher and subscription_id is set, the same as for an automatic retry. The payment object has no field that marks a manual attempt, so keep the payment_id from the retry response if you need to tell a manual attempt apart from a scheduled one.

Payment Webhook Payloads

Full payload schemas for payment events.

Subscription Payment Retries

The automatic back-off schedule that runs alongside manual retries.

Subscription Dunning

Email the customer to update their payment method after a hard decline.

Handle Payment Failures

Read decline codes and decide when a retry is worthwhile.

Error Codes

Every MANUAL_RETRY_* code, its trigger, and its message.

Getting Started

Features

Integrate

Merchant of Record

Miscellaneous

What Is Manual Retry?

Retrying from the Dashboard

Eligibility

Retry Limits

Manual vs. Automatic Retries

Retrying via the API

Check Whether a Payment Can Be Retried

Send a Manual Retry

Error Responses

Webhooks

Payment Webhook Payloads

Subscription Payment Retries

Subscription Dunning

Handle Payment Failures

Error Codes

​What Is Manual Retry?

​Retrying from the Dashboard

​Eligibility

​Retry Limits

​Manual vs. Automatic Retries

​Retrying via the API

​Check Whether a Payment Can Be Retried

​Send a Manual Retry

​Error Responses

​Webhooks

Payment Webhook Payloads

​Related

Subscription Payment Retries

Subscription Dunning

Handle Payment Failures

Error Codes

What Is Manual Retry?

Retrying from the Dashboard

Eligibility

Retry Limits

Manual vs. Automatic Retries

Retrying via the API

Check Whether a Payment Can Be Retried

Send a Manual Retry

Error Responses

Webhooks

Related