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When Stripe webhook verification fails with “No signatures found matching the expected signature for payload,” the verifier has computed a signature over the data it received and found no match in the Stripe-Signature header. On replayed events, the cause is almost always one of three things: the request body was changed after Stripe signed it, the verifier is using a secret that belongs to a different endpoint or listener, or the timestamp is older than the verifier’s tolerance. Check them in that order, and keep signature verification separate from duplicate-event handling, which is a different control.
What the signature check actually compares
Stripe’s v1 scheme signs two things: the timestamp from the header and the raw payload bytes of the request. The Stripe-Signature header carries the timestamp as t= and one or more signatures as v1=. The verifier rebuilds the signed string from the timestamp, a period character, and the payload, then computes an HMAC with your endpoint secret and compares it with each v1 value. The Go SDK’s webhook package is the clearest reference for this logic, and its webhook client source shows the timestamp and payload handling directly.
Two consequences follow. A single changed byte in the body breaks the match, and a correct secret with a stale timestamp fails the age check even when nothing else changed.
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Step 1: Verify the exact bytes Stripe sent
This is the most common cause. Your framework may parse the body into an object before your handler runs, and once parsed, the original bytes are gone. Re-serializing the JSON rarely reproduces them exactly, because whitespace, key order, and number formatting can differ.
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What commonly changes the body
- A global JSON body parser that runs before the webhook route, such as a body-parsing middleware applied to every route.
- Compression or decompression middleware that rewrites the stream.
- Request-normalizing middleware, or a proxy or load balancer that rewrites the body or its encoding.
- Re-serializing a parsed object with
JSON.stringifyor an equivalent function in another language.
How to fix it
- Mount the webhook route so it receives the raw body. In Express, for example, this is usually done with
express.raw({ type: 'application/json' })on that route only. - Keep the raw buffer or string unchanged until verification completes.
- Pass that same value, together with the
Stripe-Signatureheader exactly as received, to Stripe’s verification helper. - Log the body length and a hash at the verification point, and compare them with what your proxy logs show. A mismatch points to a rewrite upstream.
Step 2: Use the secret for the delivery path
Signatures are computed with a secret tied to a specific endpoint, and local forwarding uses a separate listener secret. Mixing them up produces the same error as a changed body.
| Delivery path | Which secret to use | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Webhook endpoint configured in the Stripe Dashboard or API | The signing secret of that endpoint object | The webhook endpoint object documented in the Stripe webhook endpoints reference |
| Events forwarded by the Stripe CLI during local development | The webhook signing secret printed by the listener for that session | Output of the stripe listen command, described in the Stripe CLI listen command wiki |
| Your Stripe API key | Not used for signature verification | Not applicable |
If the endpoint is production and the listener is local, the secrets differ. Store each in its own environment variable so a deployment cannot silently pick up the wrong one.
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Step 3: Check the timestamp tolerance and the server clock
The Go SDK rejects signatures older than a tolerance window. Its source defines the default as 300 * time.Second, with the comment “DefaultTolerance indicates that signatures older than this will be rejected by ConstructEvent.” That is a software default in one SDK, not a platform-wide guarantee, so confirm the value in the SDK you use.
- If verification runs seconds after delivery, the timestamp is well inside the window.
- If your server clock drifts, valid events can look old or new. Confirm the host clock is synchronized with a time service.
- The Go SDK offers an option to ignore tolerance. That removes the age check that limits stale replays, so treat it as a deliberate exception for a specific case, not a fix for intermittent failures.
Why replays fail specifically
A replay is any attempt to process a stored event again. Failures tend to come from one of two designs.
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Re-verifying a stored request later
If you save the incoming request and later feed it back through verification, the original timestamp may now be older than your tolerance. The check then rejects an event whose payload is untouched. The fix is to verify once at ingress, then store the raw body, the Stripe-Signature header, the verification result, and the event ID in a controlled store. Reprocess from that trusted record instead of re-running signature verification on an expired signature.
Changing the body while queuing
Queue workers often deserialize messages and re-serialize them before handing them to the verifier. The bytes change, and the verifier fails even though the original delivery was valid. Queue the raw body as a string or base64-encoded bytes so the stored copy matches what was received.
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Secret rotation
During secret rotation, the Stripe-Signature header can contain more than one v1 signature, and the SDK accepts a match against any of them. If bytes, secret selection, and timestamp all check out but verification still fails, review the endpoint’s configuration and its signing-secret rotation history. A value copied from an old deployment is a frequent culprit.
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Passing signature verification proves the event is authentic and fresh. It does not stop your application from acting on the same event twice. Stripe retries and resends are a reason to deduplicate in your own system.
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| Mechanism | What it protects | Key used |
|---|---|---|
| Signature verification | Authenticity and freshness of each incoming delivery | Raw body, Stripe-Signature header, endpoint secret, tolerance |
| Webhook event deduplication (your application) | Repeated business effects from the same event | The Stripe Event id, which is stable across deliveries; see the Stripe Events reference |
| Stripe API idempotency keys | Safe retries of API requests your client sends to Stripe | The Idempotency-Key header on the request; the idempotent requests documentation notes that keys can be pruned after at least 24 hours, and reuse after pruning starts a new request |
For deduplication, insert the event ID into a table with a uniqueness constraint before dispatching business effects. If the insert fails because the ID already exists, acknowledge the event without repeating the work. Performing the insert and the side effect in one database transaction, where your system allows it, avoids a gap between recording and acting. This is an implementation recommendation, not a Stripe requirement.
Troubleshooting checklist
- Confirm the verifier receives the same raw bytes that arrived at the HTTP boundary.
- Confirm the header is passed unchanged and the secret matches the endpoint or CLI listener that sent the event.
- Confirm the event is inside the tolerance window and the server clock is synchronized.
- If the event is replayed, reprocess from your stored ingress record rather than re-verifying the original request.
- After a secret rotation, check the endpoint’s secret history and the secrets deployed to each environment.
- Once verification passes, insert the event ID into a unique-constrained store before running side effects.
Limits of this guidance
The 300-second default described above was confirmed in Stripe’s Go SDK source as of October 2026. Other language SDKs may set different defaults or none at all, so check the documentation for the SDK you run. This article does not state Stripe’s webhook delivery retry schedule or the window for manually resending events. Check Stripe’s current webhook delivery documentation before designing retry or replay windows around those values.
The steps above address the failure modes that appear in verification code. If the body is byte-identical, the secret matches, and the timestamp is fresh, and verification still fails, compare the header and body your server logged against the event in the Stripe Dashboard before changing code.
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