“Passing Stripe Webhooks Through Vercel Authentication in Preview Environments”

“2025-10-28”

I tried implementing this with ChatGPT’s help and ended up getting completely misled — so here’s the correct setup, as a personal memo.

Steps

Here’s the full procedure:

  1. Turn on Vercel Authentication
  2. Set the VERCEL_AUTOMATION_BYPASS_SECRET under Protection Bypass for Automation
  3. Add your Stripe webhook endpoint

That’s really all there is to it.

(Also, I believe this works even on the Vercel Free plan?)

Step Details

Turn on Vercel Authentication

Go to your project’s Settings → Deployment Protection, and enable Vercel Authentication.

Set VERCEL_AUTOMATION_BYPASS_SECRET under Protection Bypass for Automation

In the same screen, look for Protection Bypass for Automation, then set any random 32-character string.

You can regenerate it later if needed, and Vercel will show the value again — so you don’t even need to keep a memo.

Add Your Stripe Webhook Endpoint

Here’s what the endpoint URL should look like:

https://staging.example.com/api/stripe/webhook?x-vercel-protection-bypass=your-32-character-secret

When I asked ChatGPT about this part, it gave me a bunch of nonsense answers — seriously, come on.

For reference, this setup is also mentioned on Stack Overflow.

Life-saver, really.

That’s all there is to it.