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Design a Subscription Billing System

System DesignhardVery Common
billingpaymentssubscriptionsdistributed-systems

Reported

14 times

Last seen

2026-03-28

First seen

2025-05-01

Active in

2025, 2026

Description

Design a system that handles recurring billing with proration, plan changes, trials, and dunning for failed payments.

Approach Tips

Start with the billing cycle lifecycle. Discuss proration strategies (charge immediately vs next invoice), dunning retries, and how to handle timezone edge cases.

Sources

Blind·SDE-3·2026-03-28
Glassdoor·Senior·2026-01-22
Reddit·Staff·2025-10-15
ST

Stripe

Fintech

Typically appears in: Onsite - System Design

60 min — Design a payment-related distributed system. Emphasis on reliability, consistency, and fault tolerance.