> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://developer.paddle.com/llms.txt).

# Pause or cancel a subscription immediately

Pause or cancel a subscription right away, rather than at the end of the billing period.

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## What's new?

You can now pause or cancel subscriptions immediately. This means that `immediately` is now an accepted allowed value for `effective_from` when sending a request to pause or cancel a subscription.

- **effective_from** (string): When this subscription change should take effect from. Defaults to `next_billing_period` for a scheduled change, or set to `immediately` to apply now.

## How it works

Previously, you could only [pause](https://developer.paddle.com/build/subscriptions/pause-subscriptions.md) or [cancel](https://developer.paddle.com/build/subscriptions/cancel-subscriptions.md) an active subscription at the end of the current billing period. Paddle creates a `scheduled_change` against a subscription to say the subscription should pause or cancel effective of the next billing period, then automatically applies that scheduled change when it's due.

We updated the Paddle platform so now you can pause or cancel a subscription right away by including `effective_from` with the value of `immediately` in the body of your request.

`effective_from` was already a valid field in request bodies when pausing or canceling a subscription, but the only accepted allowed value for active subscriptions was `next_billing_period`. `immediately` was only an accepted allowed value in requests to cancel paused subscriptions, but now it's accepted when pausing and canceling active subscriptions too.

As before, `effective_from` defaults to `next_billing_period` when working with active subscriptions, so sending an empty request body or omitting this field in your request results in a cancellation or pause at the end of the next billing period. This behavior is unchanged.

## Next steps

This change is available in version `1` of the Paddle API.

It's a non-breaking change, meaning it doesn't impact existing integrations.

You can send a request to [pause](https://developer.paddle.com/build/subscriptions/pause-subscriptions.md) or [cancel](https://developer.paddle.com/build/subscriptions/cancel-subscriptions.md) a subscription using the API to use the new allowed value.
## Summary of changes

| Name | Type | Change | Entity | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `immediately` | Enum value | added | effective_from | Pause or cancel an active subscription immediately. |