Of course, it’d be easy to blame vibe-coded AI apps for everything, but the reality was Garmin’s process was equally to blame. They treated every inbound request as if it were an enterprise-level company, rather than perhaps just a hobbyist developer or early-stage startup. That meant that everything from business case validation, policy validation, and such was all done at a level far beyond any other wearable in the space. Applications could take weeks to months (easily), compared with sometimes instant access to credentials from other companies like Polar, Wahoo, Suunto, and more. Garmin didn’t differentiate between the credential types: Everyone got the same full-fledged access, whether they really needed it or not.

That changes today, with three distinct tiers that essentially allow an app to ‘grow’ from hobbyist level, to startup level, to full ‘enterprise’ level access with 24×7 support/etc. The first two tiers are free, and greatly expand access to individuals wanting instant access to Garmin’s platform, effectively creating an MCP level of sorts…minus actually creating an MCP.

With that, let’s dive into it.

What Changes:

In short, Garmin Connect now has three different API levels, versions the previous level that required a bunch of paperwork and verifications. These three levels are now:

– Personal: Designed for a single person to have access to their activity and health data via the Connect API
– Startup: Designed for organizations that need to support up to 1,000 users, adds more API areas
– Enterprise: Everything above, plus more API areas, technical support, and historical data. Oh, and it costs money.

All of this is best shown in the chart below, which I’ve copied from Garmin’s Connect API site, but we’ll keep it here for long-term historical reference. Cause, if we know anything from the past, it’ll probably change again.

The key thing here is that both the Personal and Startup levels get both JSON summaries (which is what that means in this context), as well as full .FIT file with the activity data in it. Though, it does sound like Garmin is annoyingly stripping out some data they consider proprietary, whereas if you upload it manually from your watch/device, that data is there. I’m hoping they’ll change that, partially because it’s dumb, and partially because it just increases the ways things can go wrong and is overly complicated.

Still, I’m glad to see they’re offering the full .FIT file, as anything less would have mostly been useless when you start talking more interesting application ideas. Beyond that, you also get both general Health Data and Women’s Health Data JSON summaries (which is fine in this context, I think).

The process to create a Personal API key takes a few seconds in total.

I just did it again, end to end; maybe 8 seconds?

Meanwhile, stepping up to the ‘Starter’ level adds the Courses & Training API’s. These allow developers to push  routes/courses to Garmin Connect, which can in turn end up on your device. And the same is true for structured workouts. Think things like Strava and Komoot Routes use this for routes, and TrainingPeaks or Final Surge uses this to send planned workouts. It sounds like approvals for this tier should be virtually instant.

Which then takes us to the ‘Enterprise’ level, which adds the Golf API that does small ball things, as well as more notably, the Historical Data backfill. This means when someone connects a new account up to their app, it’ll allow the user to backfill a predefined amount of historical data, versus just data from that moment forward. Further, it provides technical support and allows for more than 1,000 users.

But of course – there’s a catch. Once you hit that 1,000-user realm, you’re now in ‘pay-for-play’ land. Garmin is joining Whoop in charging a fee here. There’s essentially an initial $1,000 entry fee, which is a credit towards your monthly active user bill. That means as a company you’ll pay on a per-user basis, for “active monthly users” that are connected. That’s a big shift from the current ‘totally free’ realm that’s been the case for Garmin Connect since 2019, when they dropped the previous $5,000 entry fee.

Garmin is essentially saying they’re trying to recoup some of the costs of supporting the platform, while also being able to provide support at this higher tier. There’s also a reality here that many other companies are trying to build full businesses on the backs of Garmin’s platform (e.g. Bevel), and Garmin basically feels like if they want enterprise-level support, they should pay for it.

So what does that ‘monthly active users’ fee cost? Well, that’s to be negotiated on a per-company basis. It sounds like what Strava or Komoot would pay is undoubtedly different than what a smaller company would pay. However, for funsies, you may not know that the DCR Analyzer actually supports the Garmin Connect API today (along with Amazfit, COROS, Hammerhead, Polar, Suunto, Wahoo, Google Health, and Apple Health via HealthFit). So I asked what it’d cost us. We have roughly 20,000 total users, but a much smaller portion of those are monthly active users with Garmin Connections. While I can’t share the exact amount, it’s fair to say it falls within the rough category of ‘pennies on the dollar’.

This brings the next question: when will companies start to pay this? By April 1st, 2027. Between now and then, Garmin will work with existing Garmin Connect API partners to sort out that financial piece. By default, though, all existing partners become ‘Enterprise’ automatically. Further, no existing partner has to pay the $1,000 Enterprise entry fee.

I don’t love the idea of Garmin charging anything to access this data, and I largely feel like this should simply be the cost of doing business in 2026. If not, stick that cost into the marketing budget, because that’s what it is. It’s marketing for Garmin devices. Every single 3rd-party platform that integrates with Garmin is marketing for Garmin. That said, if I put on my DCR Analyzer hat, the cost here is pretty negligible – at least for one company. If a user wants to connect all of these platforms, then perhaps it’s slightly more notable, but even then, it still wouldn’t really matter to the bottom line.

Oh, and for lack of a better place to stick it, the existing Garmin Connect IQ program remains free and unchanged (that’s for widgets/apps/etc. on Garmin devices).

The Enterprise Competitive Landscape:

So what does the ‘API’ competitive landscape look like? Well, it depends. There’s no real question here that Garmin provides the most robust API in terms of features (e.g., routes, structured workouts, completed activities, health data, women’s health, etc.). That part honestly isn’t really debatable – it’s factually true. Equally, while platforms like Apple provide free access, they don’t offer a web-based API to push data into Apple Health. Meaning, a partner has to develop an iOS app to push/pull it there. That’s why for the DCR Analyzer we use HealthFit as our partner to pull data from Apple Health. The last thing I wanted to do was develop an app simply to get my Apple Fitness data; that solved our need.

Anyways, as for other device platforms – like COROS, Suunto, Wahoo, Polar, Amazfit, etc. – all of them today provide some level of API, but whether or not they provide it for the end-user to do something is heavily mixed. For example, COROS rolled out their MCP access for free for all COROS users. And Suunto announced the same thing last week for some time in the future. Wahoo and Amazfit have programs for companies, but those aren’t really available for individuals. Suunto and Polar also have programs for companies too, and both of those are pretty easy to access. In fact, fun tidbit: Out of all the API partners we implemented for the DCR Analyzer, by far Polar was the fastest and easiest to do.

Historically speaking, Whoop, for example, has charged for more detailed API access (such as the full workout files), while allowing free summary information. As an example, in the case of the DCR Analyzer, that’s not super useful, so we haven’t pursued it. Perhaps the pricing is reasonable; historically it hasn’t been.

In fact, one thing that Whoop specifically does is charge for ‘aggregator’ type platforms, such as Terra. Generally speaking, when I talk to platforms/companies in the sports tech realm, most have a strong disdain for Terra. It’s mostly for two reasons. The first is that most companies have felt that Terra consistently misleads their customers into thinking they have legit partnerships with the big platforms, when historically speaking, many of those platforms had never even heard of Terra. Second, Terra wasn’t using proper APIs (e.g. OAuth) for many of the sites they accessed, which makes it a notable security concern for the platforms in question. This 14-month-old community support question best exemplifies the issue in one efficient thread.

We saw this play out recently when Terra got themselves in a pickle as Garmin shut off access to the API for them, until they followed the rules that had been in place for years. Terra responded by asking people to e-mail Garmin’s CEO directly (and provided his e-mail address). Likewise, I got flooded with e-mails as well.

Still, Garmin’s shift here towards charging for API access will set a dangerous precedent for the industry. Especially for a company that bills itself as a (or the?) premium sports hardware provider. On the flip side, there’s simply no ignoring the flood of mostly AI apps that take up resources at Garmin and elsewhere to support. Heck, my inbox is flooded with these apps daily requesting reviews. It sounds like when Garmin shut off access to the API last spring, they were seeing inbound API requests at a daily scale that they’d previously only seen over a period of weeks. Simply put, there’s no good answer.

Going Forward:

Ultimately, there’s sorta a few groups of winners and losers here. For hobbyists, this is a huge win. A massive one. This is the first time that Garmin has provided access (and instant access) to their API for individual users to grab and play with their own data without having to deal with manual .FIT file uploads/management. Likewise, those users can easily/instantly get into the ‘Startup’ category and do more things – all for free up to 1,000 users. So for companies trying to test out a theory, it’s all good news there.

Where things get fuzzier is the bigger companies, though of course, 1,000 users is hardly ‘big’. Strava has 200 million users, for context. At least now the gates are back open again, and companies can start working their way through the process accordingly. It sounds like part of the goal here is that by offloading the lower-tier access, they can increase the response time for enterprise tiers, minimizing the delay to get through that paperwork approval pile. Plus, those bigger companies can get proper technical support too.

Anyways, interesting times indeed.

With that – thanks for reading!

P.S. – I found an old picture of Garmin’s Connect Developer Summit from 2019 when they first abolished the API fee. Seems appropriate here, even above.