Turn automatic renewal on or off

Auto-renew helps ensure your website remains online without needing to track the expiration date. This guide explains how to enable and disable automatic renewal and pay for your site’s purchases.

In this video, you’ll learn how automatic renewals work on WordPress.com. It covers when yearly and monthly purchases renew, how to turn auto-renewal on or off, and how to manually renew a subscription.

By default, WordPress.com plans, domains, and other subscriptions are set to automatically renew to ensure no disruption in your services, loss of features, or expiration of your domain name. Automatic renewal ensures that everything is taken care of in advance and allows time to resolve any issues with payment.

If your subscription auto-renews and you didn’t mean for it to, request a refund within the refund window. You can review past renewals in your Billing History.

If you subscribed during a promotion, used a coupon code, or received a discount, your subscription will automatically renew for the full subscription price at the end of the discount period.

Yearly plans renew one month before the expiration date. For example, if your plan expires on October 15, 2024, the renewal charge occurs on September 15, 2024. If the automatic renewal is turned off, the plan will expire on October 15, 2024.

Your subscription is extended from the original expiration date, so renewing 30 days in advance does not result in losing any time you paid for. If you have a yearly subscription, you will be notified by email before your card is charged.

For monthly plans, automatic renewal occurs on the expiration date.

If you upgrade your plan or renew for a longer term (e.g., from annual to two years), you will receive a prorated upgrade credit for the unused time on the existing plan, and your new plan will have a new expiration date.

To see when you will be charged next and confirm whether your subscription is automatically set to renew or not, follow these steps:

1. Hover over your name at the top right corner of any screen while logged into WordPress.com.
2. Select the “My WordPress.com account” button:

3. On the side, select the Billing menu option.
4. Select the “Active Upgrades” option:

5. Here, you’ll find a list of all your active subscriptions on WordPress.com. Click on any plan, domain, or other subscription to view it.
6. Check under “Manage subscription” where auto-renew will be toggled on or off. If it’s enabled, the next billing date will be shown:

7. Go back to Billing and select the “Billing History” option to see which plans, domains, and other purchases have already been renewed.

If automatic renewal is turned off, your subscription will expire on its expiration date. You’ll have a short grace period to renew manually before the subscription is removed from your site. We recommend keeping automatic renewal enabled so your site doesn’t expire unexpectedly.

Canceling a subscription produces the same result as turning off automatic renewal: the subscription stays active until its expiry date and then ends. See cancel or remove a subscription for the cancellation steps.

To turn off the automatic renewal, follow these steps:

1. Visit Billing in your WordPress.com account.
2. Select the “Active Upgrades” option.
3. Click on your plan or other purchase.
4. Under “Manage subscription” toggle the option next to “Enable auto-renew” to the off position:

You will be notified via email before your subscription ends. If you wish to renew your plan or other subscription, click on the “Renew now” button to manually extend your subscription at any time.

If you have disabled automatic renewal and wish to enable it again, follow these steps:

1. Visit Billing in your WordPress.com account.
2. Select the “Active Upgrades” option.
3. Click on the plan or other purchase.
4. Under “Manage subscription,” toggle on the option next to “Enable auto-renew”.
   • If you have not added a payment method, you will be prompted to add one now so the subscription can be billed on the renewal date.
5. After a few seconds, the page will reload, and the toggle next to “Enable auto-renew” will be turned on.

To make a payment to renew a plan, domain, or other purchase manually, take these steps:

1. Visit Billing in your WordPress.com account.
2. Select the “Active Upgrades” option.
3. Select the purchase you wish to pay for.
4. Click the “Renew now” option at the bottom of the page, as shown below.
5. Complete the checkout screen to pay for your renewal.