DriftcheckCompare · Stripe native tooling
Stripe's built-in tools vs Driftcheck
Stripe's native tooling — Billing, Smart Retries, billing and usage alerts, the Dashboard, Workbench, and Sigma — is genuinely good, free or low-cost, and the right place to run anything that lives inside Stripe. If a card fails, Stripe retries it. If a webhook delivery fails, Workbench shows you. None of that is what Driftcheck does.
The gap is everything Stripe can't see: your own application database. Stripe knows its own state perfectly, but it has no idea what your app recorded. Driftcheck cross-checks Stripe against your DB (or a CSV export) to surface the silent drift between the two — the ghost customer Stripe still bills but your app deactivated, the webhook your app returned 200 for and then silently failed to process, the plan your app thinks is Pro while Stripe charges Starter. Detection only: Driftcheck never retries, never duns, never predicts churn.
What Stripe's built-in tools do
Stripe natively offers Smart Retries (automatic, AI-timed retries of failed subscription payments), billing and usage alerts on meter thresholds, the Dashboard's revenue-recovery views, Workbench for webhook delivery monitoring and manual event re-sends, and Sigma for SQL queries over your Stripe data. Together these run and report on everything happening inside Stripe.
The key difference
Stripe's tools see only Stripe's own data. They can tell you a webhook delivery returned a 2xx, but not whether your app actually persisted the event; they can show a subscription's status, but not that your app DB disagrees. Driftcheck is a detection-only layer that compares Stripe against your app database to find that cross-system drift — then hands you evidence, never acting on it.
Side by side
| Driftcheck | Stripe native | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Cross-check Stripe against your app DB and report drift | Run and report on billing inside Stripe |
| Acts on findings? | No — detection only; you decide what to do | Yes — Smart Retries auto-retries failed payments, sends dunning |
| Data access | Stripe (read-only key) + your DB or CSV export | Stripe-only — no view into your application database |
| Webhook coverage | Flags events your app returned 200 for but silently failed to process | Workbench shows HTTP delivery status; can't see post-200 app failures |
| What it uniquely catches | Ghost customers, Stripe-vs-app plan/price mismatch, app-side state drift | Failed card payments, delivery failures, usage threshold breaches |
| Evidence | Each finding traces to the exact Stripe object + the CSV cell that disagrees | Full Stripe-side audit trail; Sigma for ad-hoc SQL |
| Pricing | $12.99 one-time (key) · $20 one-time (key + CSV) · $29/mo monitor | Retries, alerts & Workbench included with Stripe; Sigma is usage-priced |
| Who it's for | Solo founders worried Stripe and their app have silently diverged | Anyone running billing on Stripe — essentially all Stripe users |
When Stripe's own tools are all you need
Stripe's native tools are the right choice — and usually all you need — when the problem lives inside Stripe. Use Smart Retries and dunning to actually recover failed payments, billing/usage alerts to fire on meter thresholds, Workbench to monitor and re-send webhook deliveries, and Sigma to query your Stripe data directly. They're built in, mostly free, and Driftcheck does none of this. If you only need to know and act on what's happening in Stripe, you don't need a separate tool.
When Driftcheck fits
Reach for Driftcheck when you suspect Stripe and your app DB have quietly diverged — and Stripe, by design, can't tell you because it doesn't know your app's state. A webhook that delivered (2xx) but your handler silently dropped; a customer your app cancelled that Stripe still bills; a plan your app shows as Pro while Stripe charges Starter. These are invisible to every Stripe-native tool. Driftcheck is complementary: Stripe runs and recovers billing, Driftcheck audits whether your two sources of truth still agree, with per-finding evidence. Then you fix it in Stripe or your app.
Questions
Doesn't Stripe already alert me about failed payments and webhooks?
Yes — for things inside Stripe. Stripe retries failed cards, sends dunning, and Workbench shows webhook delivery status. But Stripe only knows whether a webhook delivery returned a 2xx, not whether your app actually processed it. If your endpoint returns 200 and then silently fails to update your database, Stripe marks it delivered and moves on. That post-200 drift is exactly what Driftcheck catches by comparing Stripe to your DB.
Can't I just write a Sigma query to find this drift?
Sigma is powerful for querying your Stripe data, but it can only see data that's in Stripe. The mismatches Driftcheck finds are between Stripe and your application database — a comparison Sigma structurally can't make, because your app's state isn't in Stripe. Driftcheck does the cross-system diff and ranks the findings for you.
Does Driftcheck replace Stripe's retries or dunning?
No. Driftcheck is detection-only — it never retries payments, runs recovery sequences, or predicts churn. Keep Stripe's Smart Retries and dunning for recovery; Driftcheck sits alongside them, surfacing the silent Stripe-vs-app drift those tools can't see, with evidence for each finding.
See it on your own Stripe
Find out where you’re actually leaking.
Driftcheck reads your Stripe with a read-only key and emails a ranked PDF of every silent leak — each one traced to the exact Stripe object behind it.
Sources: Stripe — Smart Retries · Stripe — Receive events (webhooks) · Stripe — Workbench