What happens when the subscription expires

Access drops, data does not. The order of events, and what to do two days before it matters.

Nothing dramatic happens at expiry, which is exactly why people are surprised by it. The account does not disappear; the paid features do. The order in which things stop, what survives, and when something can genuinely be gone are three separate questions.

The order of events

1. Day 0. The period ends. Higher limits, priority access and paid-only features stop working; you fall back to the free tier on the same account. Signing in is unaffected.
2. Days 1–30. Conversations, projects, settings and uploaded files remain attached to the account. You can still log in; you simply cannot use what you were paying for.
3. Later. The vendor may prune data on long-inactive accounts on its own schedule. There is no promised grace period, and nobody warns you first — this shop does not send email at all.

What survives and what does not

Survives: the account itself, the email on it, your history for a while, and project files you can still open. Does not survive: the usage limits, priority access, and anything readable only through a paid feature.

The practical risk is not data loss on day one — it is discovering three weeks later that something you needed no longer opens. The second, more frequent version is assuming a paid feature still works and finding out in a meeting that it stopped.

The two-day checklist

• Export whatever lives only inside a paid feature: project files, long threads, uploaded attachments. Do not assume it stays reachable.
• Choose one of three: renew, upgrade, or stop. Upgrading and then renewing is the classic double payment — see the renewal order guide.
• Look at which ceiling you actually touched this month: the roughly five-hour rolling window or the weekly total. The first says you concentrate; the second says you need a heavier tier.
• If you are switching accounts, confirm the new one logs in and its Organization ID copies cleanly before you pay anything.

If it expires by accident

Nothing is lost immediately. Order the same plan again and you are back where you were, minus the days you were dark. The mechanics are identical to the first purchase: crypto only, one invoice, one network, one exact amount; activation still needs an identifier and nothing else — the org_ value from Settings, then Account for Claude, a session token for ChatGPT, never a password or a 2FA code.

The only irreversible loss is data the vendor pruned during the gap, which is the entire reason the two-day checklist exists.

Unused days are a different question

At natural expiry there are no unused days left, so there is nothing to prorate. Proration exists for a period cut short: order amount multiplied by unused days, divided by total days. If you decide mid-month that you are done, do not wait for the end — by then the money is spent. A replacement subscription is offered first; if it ends as a refund, it goes back on-chain to the address you sent from, usually confirmed inside twelve hours.

And the boundary is worth stating: an account restricted for violating the vendor's terms is not an expiry event and is not refundable, and no third party can insure that case.

Plans and their periods are on the price list; how the weekly ceiling behaves is in the weekly limit explained; refund rules are on the refund page; and what each order state means is in what happens after you order.

Common questions

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