api webhook_reliability ai_generated true

Stripe webhook event received multiple times despite 200 response

ID: api/stripe-webhook-duplicate-delivery

Also available as: JSON · Markdown
88%Fix Rate
90%Confidence
3Evidence
2023-01-01First Seen

Version Compatibility

VersionStatusIntroducedDeprecatedNotes
any active — — —

Root Cause

Stripe retries webhooks if your endpoint takes >5s to respond 200, even if it eventually succeeds. Docs say 'up to 3 days' but don't clarify the 5s window clearly.

generic

Workarounds

  1. 95% success Return 200 immediately, then process asynchronously via queue 
    Receive webhook -> store raw event in DB/queue -> return 200 -> process from queue
  2. 92% success Implement idempotency using event.id as dedup key 
    if Event.objects.filter(stripe_event_id=event['id']).exists(): return 200
  3. 85% success Use Stripe's event retrieval API to verify event authenticity instead of trusting payload 
    event = stripe.Event.retrieve(event_id) # re-fetch from Stripe API

Dead Ends

Common approaches that don't work:

  1. Return 200 after processing the event fully 85% fail

    If processing takes >5s, Stripe assumes failure and retries. You get duplicate events with same event ID.

  2. Rely on Stripe's 'at-most-once' delivery assumption 90% fail

    Stripe explicitly guarantees 'at-least-once' delivery. Duplicates are expected behavior, not a bug.