What is the difference between WooCommerce subscriptions and memberships?

WooCommerce Subscriptions is designed for recurring payments. It lets you sell products or services billed weekly, monthly, or yearly (like a subscription box, maintenance plan, or SaaS-style access). It handles renewals, upgrades/downgrades, trials, sign-up fees, and automated billing. WooCommerce Memberships controls access. It restricts content, products, discounts, or pages to members based on plans (like “Gold Members”). Memberships can be sold as one-time or recurring, but recurring billing typically uses Subscriptions. In short: Subscriptions = how you charge repeatedly; Memberships = what access/benefits customers receive.