Prices vs variants
When to add a price and when to let product options carry it
A checkout can carry several prices, and product variants can carry their own prices too. Both let a customer pick between amounts, so it isn't always obvious which to use — and you can use both together.
Which should I use?
Prices
Use prices when the customer is choosing how to pay for the same thing.
Use this if you're offering:
- monthly or yearly
- buy outright or subscribe
- a few tiers of the same product
Variants
Use variants when the customer is choosing what they're buying, and the amount follows from that.
Use this if you're offering:
- sizes, colors or formats at different amounts
- packages made of different things
- add-ons alongside a main product
See Product variants for how to set them up.
Using both
A variant can be attached to particular prices, so the price a customer picks decides which options they're shown. A checkout offering Standard and Pro can show a different set of add-ons under each.
How to attach a variant to a price
- Go to Product → Variants.
- Enter a Variant name.
- Under Applies to prices, select the prices this variant should appear under. Every variant needs at least one.
- Add your options.
- Click Save.
Which options can go under which prices
Each option has its own Billing — One-time, Pay what you want, or Recurring — and it has to work with every price the variant applies to.
| Option billing | Available when |
|---|---|
| One-time | Always |
| Pay what you want | Always |
| Recurring | The variant applies to recurring prices only |
Add a one-time price to the selection and Recurring greys out, labelled needs all-recurring prices. A recurring option takes its interval from the price it sits under.
The reason is that an order can only carry one recurring interval. That keeps every order cleanly either a payment or a subscription — never a mix — in your dashboard, your webhooks and the API.
Using variants instead of a price
A checkout doesn't have to carry a price of its own. Click Use variants instead, under the create button, and the variants supply the amount.
The checkout still has a billing type and a currency — what it doesn't have is an amount until the customer picks an option.
Click Create checkout & add variants and the checkout opens on the Product → Variants tab, ready for you to add them.
Discounted from and a setup fee are still available, and behave exactly as they do on a checkout with a price of its own.
If you already built pricing tiers with variants
Nothing to change. Tiers built with variants before prices existed keep working as they are.