Stripe event: customer.subscription.created, provision only if the status is real

TL;DR

Stripe will move it to active (via customer.subscription.updated plus invoice.payment\succeeded) or to incomplete\expired if payment never lands. The handler reads data.object.items.data and looks up the tier.

Steps

1. Read data.object.status. Provision only when it is active or trialing.
2. If status is incomplete, the first payment has not succeeded. Do not provision. Stripe will move it to active (via customer.subscription.updated plus invoice.payment_succeeded) or to incomplete_expired if payment never lands.
3. If status is incomplete_expired, the signup failed outright. Treat it as an abandoned signup, optionally email the customer to retry.
4. On active or trialing: create the account, grant the plan's entitlements, store the subscription id against your user. Return 200.

When to use

You are seeing this: A subscription object now exists. Use this skill when you run into "Stripe event: customer.subscription.created, provision only if the status is real".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Stripe's event reference says customer.subscription.created occurs whenever a customer is signed up for a new plan. Verified live at https://docs.stripe.com/api/events/types. The status field (incomplete, incompleteexpired, trialing, active, pastdue, canceled, unpaid) is the documented source of truth for whether the subscription is usable.