Stripe Webhook Reliability Patterns Every SaaS Should Implement

Your Stripe webhooks are probably dropping events and you do not know it. I built a payment recovery system that processes Stripe webhooks for SaaS companies. In the first week, I discovered three ways webhooks silently fail. Here is what to watch for and how to fix each one. The Problem Nobody Talks About Stripe sends a webhook. Your server is restarting. The webhook fails. Stripe retries. Your server is back but your database has a lock. The retry fails. Stripe retries again 1 hour later. By then your customer's payment has failed, they got no email, and they churned. This happens more often than you think. Stripe retries up to 3 times over 72 hours, but if your endpoint is flaky during that window, the event is gone forever. Pattern 1: Idempotent Event Processing Stripe can send the same event multiple times. If your handler is not idempotent, you will send duplicate emails, create duplicate subscriptions, or double-charge customers. async function handleWebhook ( event : Stripe . E