Application Error When Subscribing via Billing API (Works After Refresh)

[Shrutika_Lokhande]

Hi everyone,

We’re encountering an intermittent issue with our Shopify app’s Billing API integration when trying to create or require a subscription.

Here’s the scenario:

We’re using billing.require() as follows:

// Available plans
const ESSENTIAL_PLAN = ‘Essential Plan’;
const ADVANCED_PLAN = ‘Advanced Plan’;

await billing.require({
plans: [ESSENTIAL_PLAN, ADVANCED_PLAN],
isTest: true,
returnUrl: ‘https://test-discounts.myshopify.com/admin/apps/test-discount/app/subscriptions’,
onFailure: async () => billing.request({
plan: plan === “essential” ? ESSENTIAL_PLAN :
plan === “advanced” ? ADVANCED_PLAN : “”,
returnUrl,
isTest,
}),
});

When the subscription process starts, we sometimes get the following error before any redirect happens:

Billing error: Response {
size: 0,
status: 401,
statusText: ‘Unauthorized’,
headers: {
‘x-shopify-api-request-failure-reauthorize-url’:
‘https://demo-sales-volume-discounts.myshopify.com/admin/charges/.../confirm_recurring_application_charge?…’
}
}

After this “Application Error” appears, if we refresh the page and retry, it works perfectly fine.

What We’ve Noticed

• The issue doesn’t happen consistently, it appears intermittently.

• It seems related to reauthorization (401 Unauthorized + x-shopify-api-request-failure-reauthorize-url header).

• Once reloaded, the app is authorized again and the billing flow completes successfully.

What We’d Like to Know

• Has anyone else experienced this intermittent 401 Unauthorized when creating billing subscriptions?

• Is there a recommended way to handle or preempt reauthorization before calling billing.require() or billing.request()?

• Could this be related to app bridge session handling or token expiration timing?

Any insights or workarounds would be greatly appreciated!