Add billing to your app

Step 3 of 3. With Stripe connected and your plans defined, you can now use billing inside your app. You can detect a first-time user and show them your plans, give users a subscription page to upgrade or downgrade, and surface billing statuses, like a payment that didn’t go through. This page briefly covers each capability and links out where we go deeper.

Prerequisite: auth + bootstrap

Billing rides on the same setup as auth. Before anything here works you need Bridge auth configured and <BridgeProvider> mounted in your root layout. See Authentication if you haven’t done that yet, and How billing works for the model.

Billing state is already live, with no init call

Once <BridgeProvider> mounts in your root app/layout.tsx, billing is already live. The provider fetches the subscription for the current workspace (called a tenant in the API), and honors your configured billing routes. There is no separate billing init call.

State lands on the unified bridge object and updates over the live channel (a persistent realtime connection the SDK maintains):

'use client';
import { bridge, useBridgeReadable } from '@nebulr-group/bridge-nextjs/client';

export function PlanLine() {
  const subscription = useBridgeReadable(bridge.tenant.subscription);            // plan, status, trial
  const entitlements = useBridgeReadable(bridge.tenant.entitlements.snapshot);   // what the plan grants

  if (!subscription) return null;
  return (
    <p>Plan: {subscription.plan.name} ({subscription.status})</p>
  );
}

Configure your billing routes

Add a billing block to the BridgeConfig you already pass to <BridgeProvider> in app/providers.tsx:

// app/providers.tsx
'use client';
import { BridgeProvider } from '@nebulr-group/bridge-nextjs/client';
import { useMemo, type ReactNode } from 'react';

export function Providers({ children }: { children: ReactNode }) {
  // appId comes from NEXT_PUBLIC_BRIDGE_APP_ID via the provider's env reader
  const config = useMemo(
    () => ({
      loginRoute: '/auth/login',
      billing: {
        paywallRoute: '/subscription', // send plan-less workspaces here
      },
    }),
    [],
  );

  return <BridgeProvider config={config}>{children}</BridgeProvider>;
}

// app/layout.tsx
import { Providers } from './providers';

export default function RootLayout({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>
        <Providers>{children}</Providers>
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}

Framework note: define the config object in a client component, not as an inline object prop in the Server Component root layout. Nested runtime config like billing is brittle across the Server to Client boundary, and memoizing the object keeps its identity stable across renders.

paywallRoute: when set, the provider redirects an authenticated workspace that hasn’t selected a plan here. Point it at wherever your <PlanSelector> lives. (Workspaces that opt out via paymentsAutoRedirect: false are exempt.)

It’s optional. Leave paywallRoute unset if you’d rather gate the app with <BridgePaywall> (below) than redirect.

Adding billing to your UI

Here are three use cases for billing in your UI:

1. Letting users select a plan after first signup: wrap your root layout in <BridgePaywall>; it blocks the app and shows a plan picker until the workspace has an active plan, so a brand-new user picks a plan before they get in:

// app/layout.tsx
import { BridgePaywall } from '@nebulr-group/bridge-nextjs/client';
import { Providers } from './providers';

export default function RootLayout({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>
        <Providers>
          <BridgePaywall successRedirect="/welcome" cancelRedirect="/subscription">
            {/* your app: only rendered once a plan is active */}
            {children}
          </BridgePaywall>
        </Providers>
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}

→ Require a plan to use the app

2. A self-service subscription page: drop <PlanSelector /> onto a route. It loads all the plans so your users can upgrade or downgrade directly from your app:

// app/subscription/page.tsx
'use client';
import { PlanSelector } from '@nebulr-group/bridge-nextjs/client';

export default function SubscriptionPage() {
  return <PlanSelector successUrl="/subscription/success" cancelUrl="/subscription" />;
}

→ Choose & switch plans

3. Surface billing health: <BridgeBillingNotice /> renders nothing while the subscription is healthy and the right banner (trial ending, payment failed, canceled) when it needs attention. Put it once in your root layout:

'use client';
import { BridgeBillingNotice } from '@nebulr-group/bridge-nextjs/client';

export function BillingBanner() {
  return <BridgeBillingNotice />;
}

→ Warn about billing problems

That’s the whole quickstart. From here, the rest of the billing section covers depth: subscription status, usage limits, free trials, the billing portal, and failed-payment handling, each building on the live bridge object you now have wired up.