Subscription Expired
subscription_expired402
The account's paid plan has expired. Renew to restore endpoint access and call limits.
What this means
The account was on a paid plan, but the subscription has lapsed — either because the renewal payment failed, the user cancelled and the cycle ended, or the grace period after a failed payment ran out. We've moved the account back to the Sandbox tier (which has a 500-call/month limit and no access to paid-tier endpoints). The user can renew at any time to restore full access.
When you'll see this
- A user's card on file expired and the renewal charge failed.
- The user cancelled their plan and the current billing cycle has ended.
- A renewal attempt failed and the 7-day grace period expired without resolution.
- An admin manually downgraded the account to Sandbox.
Learn more about how this works
When a subscription lapses, we don't instantly cut access — there's a grace period (typically 7 days from the failed renewal) during which the user keeps paid-tier access while we retry the charge. If the charge eventually succeeds, nothing changes from the user's perspective. If it doesn't, the account drops to Sandbox at the end of the grace period and this error fires on the next request to a paid endpoint.
In practice: the message tells the user exactly what to do — renew at the dashboard. Don't add layers of indirection or try to handle this server-side; let the user see and act on it.
Example response
{
"success": false,
"error": "subscription_expired",
"message": "Your subscription has expired. Please renew at asterwise.com/dashboard to continue.",
"details": [],
"retry_after": null,
"doc_url": "https://docs.asterwise.com/reference/errors/subscription_expired",
"request_id": "req_01HXYZABCDEFGH",
"timestamp": "2026-05-25T12:34:56Z"
}
- Sign in at asterwise.com/dashboard.
- Check the billing section — if a payment method is expired or failed, update it.
- Click "Renew" or "Subscribe" to restore the plan. Access returns immediately on successful payment.
This is a hard authorization-style boundary — the user needs to take billing action. Surface clearly, don't retry, route to the dashboard.
Python:
Production handler
- Python
- TypeScript
import httpx
class SubscriptionExpiredError(Exception):
"""The account's paid plan has lapsed. User must renew."""
def call_asterwise(url, headers, payload):
response = httpx.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload, timeout=30)
if response.status_code == 402:
body = response.json()
if body.get("error") == "subscription_expired":
raise SubscriptionExpiredError(
"Asterwise subscription expired. "
"Renew at asterwise.com/dashboard to restore access."
)
response.raise_for_status()
return response.json()
class SubscriptionExpiredError extends Error {}
async function callAsterwise(url: string, headers: HeadersInit, payload: unknown) {
const response = await fetch(url, {
method: "POST",
headers,
body: JSON.stringify(payload),
});
if (response.status === 402) {
const body = await response.json();
if (body.error === "subscription_expired") {
throw new SubscriptionExpiredError(
"Asterwise subscription expired. " +
"Renew at asterwise.com/dashboard to restore access.",
);
}
}
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${response.status}`);
return response.json();
}
Avoid this error by
- Keep payment methods current. Card expirations are the leading cause of unexpected lapses.
- Watch for renewal-failure notification emails. We send them at the failure event and again during the grace period — both are actionable warnings before the wall.
- For team-managed accounts, make sure billing notifications go to someone who can actually update the card, not a shared inbox nobody monitors.
- If you're building on top of Asterwise for your own customers, listen for
subscription_expiredand surface a clear renewal CTA in your own UI rather than hiding the error.