---
title: "Managing SaaS access control with Stripe’s Entitlements API"
description: "Managing access rights across multiple SaaS pricing plans can require maintaining feature lists, subscription and pricing relationships, and related database resources as plans or features change. The post presents Stripe’s Entitlements API as a way to register features, associate them with Stripe Products, and retrieve active entitlements for a customer’s subscriptions. Its example defines Free, Personal, and Business monthly products priced at $0, $98, and $980, then maps article-viewing and business-report features to those products using Stripe CLI commands in Workbench. Customer entitlement checks can support application authorization, while entitlements.active_entitlement_summary.updated webhooks expose before-and-after permission data for workflows triggered by plan changes or cancellations."
---

# Managing SaaS access control with Stripe’s Entitlements API

[Stripe](https://yomu.fyi/company/stripe) · Hidetaka Okamoto · Oct 31, 2024

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

Managing access rights across multiple SaaS pricing plans can require maintaining feature lists, subscription and pricing relationships, and related database resources as plans or features change. The post presents Stripe’s Entitlements API as a way to register features, associate them with Stripe Products, and retrieve active entitlements for a customer’s subscriptions. Its example defines Free, Personal, and Business monthly products priced at $0, $98, and $980, then maps article-viewing and business-report features to those products using Stripe CLI commands in Workbench. Customer entitlement checks can support application authorization, while entitlements.active\_entitlement\_summary.updated webhooks expose before-and-after permission data for workflows triggered by plan changes or cancellations.

## Context

SaaS products with multiple pricing plans need to manage which features each plan grants, while keeping subscription, pricing, access, and related database information synchronized when features are released or customers change plans. The post frames this as a development burden for teams that want to focus resources on their core service.

## Approach / What changed

Use Stripe Products for pricing plans and the Entitlements API for feature definitions. Create entitlement features, associate them with Products, retrieve a customer’s active entitlements through the API, and use entitlements.active\_entitlement\_summary.updated webhooks to synchronize permission changes with application workflows or related resources. Stripe Workbench provides a browser-based environment for testing CLI commands and converting them into SDK code.

## Takeaways

- Stripe Products can be linked to entitlement features so an application can determine a customer’s available features from the products attached to their subscriptions.
- The example maps free article viewing to all three plans, paid article viewing to Personal and Business, and business report viewing only to Business.
- The entitlements.active\_entitlement\_summary.updated webhook includes the customer and before-and-after entitlement data, enabling workflows when permissions change through plan changes or cancellations.

**Tags:** [Architecture](https://yomu.fyi/topic/architecture), [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [REST APIs](https://yomu.fyi/topic/rest-api)

- Source: [Stripe](https://stripe.dev/blog/managing-saas-access-control-with-stripe-entitlements-api)
- Source URL: https://stripe.dev/blog/managing-saas-access-control-with-stripe-entitlements-api
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-28T08:56:49.338Z

[Read original post](https://stripe.dev/blog/managing-saas-access-control-with-stripe-entitlements-api)