Short answer. Payment is due at the time and place the work is delivered, unless the parties stipulated otherwise. Article 1720 applies the same rule to work delivered in parts: each part's fixed price is payable at the time and place that part is delivered, absent a different agreement.
What the law says
The price or compensation shall be paid at the time and place of delivery of the work, unless there is a stipulation to the contrary. If the work is to be delivered partially, the price or compensation for each part having been fixed, the sum shall be paid at the time and place of delivery, in the absence if stipulation.
Civil Code, Article 1720 — Payment of the Price. Read the full provision →
The default is payment at delivery, not before
Article 1720 sets the default rule as: the price or compensation shall be paid at the time and place of delivery of the work. Absent any agreement to the contrary, payment is tied to delivery — it is not owed in advance, and it is not something the contractor has to chase down separately after handing the work over. Delivery is the trigger the article uses for when payment becomes due.
But the parties can agree otherwise
The rule applies unless there is a stipulation to the contrary. That phrase makes the delivery-based timing a default, not an unbreakable rule — if the client and the contractor agreed on different payment terms, such as an advance, installments tied to milestones, or payment on some other schedule, that agreement controls instead of the statutory default. This is why the first place to look, in any dispute over when payment is due, is the actual agreement between the parties rather than this article alone.
The same rule for work delivered in parts
Article 1720 extends the same logic to work delivered partially: if the work is to be delivered partially, the price or compensation for each part having been fixed, the sum shall be paid at the time and place of delivery, in the absence if stipulation. Where the parties have already fixed a price for each part, that portion becomes payable when that specific part is delivered — the same delivery-triggers-payment principle, applied part by part rather than to the work as a whole.
What this means for a client or a contractor
For someone who never put payment terms in writing, Article 1720 answers the question directly: absent a contrary stipulation, you owe payment when the work — or, for work delivered in stages, each priced part of it — is actually delivered, at the place of that delivery. Whether the amount owed at that point is the full price or something else the article does not itself set; it addresses only the timing and place of payment, not how the price itself is calculated.