Google Play Subscription API：如何区分退款订阅与用户自行取消的订阅？

Hey there, I’ve dealt with this exact head-scratcher while building subscription management tools—total pain when those timestamps line up! Here are the most reliable ways to tell these two scenarios apart:

• Check the explicit subscription/order state field
  Most billing platforms (like Google Play Billing, Apple App Store Connect) include a dedicated state flag that directly distinguishes these cases. For example:

  • In Google Play's SubscriptionPurchase object, look at purchaseState: a value of 2 means the subscription was refunded. For user-initiated cancellations, purchaseState stays 0 (active) but autoRenewing will be false, and cancelReason will map to user action.
  • Apple's receipt data includes a cancellation_reason field: 1 indicates the user canceled their subscription, while 0 means the cancellation was due to a refund (initiated by you or the platform).

• Look for refund-specific fields
  Nearly all platforms add unique fields for refund events. For instance:

  • Some systems include a refundDateMillis or refundAmount field—if either is populated, you’re dealing with a refunded subscription, not a user cancellation.
  • In Apple receipts, refunded transactions will have a refund_date_ms entry tied to the original transaction ID, which you can cross-reference.

• Analyze event types from webhooks/logs
  If your system uses webhooks to receive subscription updates, the event type itself is a dead giveaway. A user-initiated cancel will trigger something like subscription.cancelled with metadata noting user action, while a refund fires subscription.refunded (or transaction.refunded). Even if the timestamps match, the event context removes all ambiguity.

• Use cancellation reason codes
  Many platforms break down cancellation reasons into specific codes:

  • Google Play’s cancelReason:
    • 0: User actively canceled the subscription
    • 3: Subscription was canceled due to a refund
  • These codes eliminate confusion even when expiryTimeMillis and userCancellationTimeMillis overlap.

Pro tip: If you’re handling subscriptions in your internal database, add a custom isRefunded boolean field when processing refund events. This acts as a failsafe for edge cases where third-party platform data might be ambiguous.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者sadiq