Garmin gives every user a free key to their own data, and will charge the bigger apps
Garmin reopened its developer programme on 21 October after seven months closed to new applicants. Apps that read Garmin activities through Intervals.icu will now need their own connection to Garmin.
Garmin has reopened its Connect Developer Program, and for the first time any Garmin Connect user can create a free personal key that lets their own code read their own activity and health data. The programme went live on 21 October, according to the developer of Intervals.icu, after being closed to new applicants since March.
The change also settles the question that led to our story on 15 October, which we corrected on 18 October. Apps that read Garmin users’ activities through Intervals.icu, the training-analysis site, will need their own connection to Garmin. “You need to get your own connection to Garmin to get activity data,” the Intervals.icu developer wrote on the site’s forum on 24 October. “Garmin have re-launched the program so this is much easier to do now.”
Garmin has not issued a press release about the programme. Its developer website now describes three levels of access.
Three tiers
Personal. Garmin describes this as “secure access to your own Garmin Connect data”. A user creates a key in the settings of the Garmin Connect website, accepts the terms, chooses an expiry date and trades the key for an access token. It covers activity data (as JSON summaries and full .FIT files), health data and women’s health data. It is pull only, which means a user’s own script has to ask for the data. Personal keys are read-only, DC Rainmaker reported, so they cannot send workouts or routes to a watch.
Business Starter. For organisations building apps. It adds the Courses and Training APIs, which push routes and structured workouts to Garmin Connect, but includes no historical data and a “limited” number of users. DC Rainmaker reported the limit as 1,000 users and said approval should be nearly instant.
Business Enterprise. For larger services. It adds the Golf API, at least a month of historical data, technical support and unlimited users. Garmin’s page says pricing is “tailored based on business and technical requirements”.
What it costs
Garmin’s own pages give no prices. According to DC Rainmaker, Enterprise access has a $1,000 entry fee, which is credited towards a monthly bill based on active users at a rate negotiated with each company. Existing partners become Enterprise members automatically, do not pay the entry fee, and start paying by 1 April 2027, DC Rainmaker reported.
DC Rainmaker said Garmin closed the programme in March after a flood of applications, many of them for apps built with AI tools, and that approvals had taken weeks or months. Ray Maker, its author, welcomed the personal key but added: “Garmin’s shift here towards charging for API access will set a dangerous precedent for the industry.”
What it means for Intervals.icu users
Garmin owners can still sync their watches to Intervals.icu as before. What changes is the next step: other apps that read Garmin activities from Intervals.icu.
Asked on the forum whether Garmin data returned by the Intervals.icu API would become like Strava data, where no details are passed on, the developer replied on 22 October: “Unfortunately that is likely to be the case.” He said he hoped to return “a stub with the Garmin ID”, so that apps with their own Garmin connection can match activities. Later that day he said Garmin “are going to work with us to make sure that the use-case is covered”. He said the details would be settled in the coming “weeks or months”, and on 24 October that it was not yet clear what would happen to wellness data and uploaded workouts. He has given no date for any change.
Not quite all your data
The5krunner reported that Garmin strips some of its own calculated metrics, including VO2max, recovery time and performance condition, from files delivered to apps through its API. DC Rainmaker also reported that some data Garmin considers proprietary is removed, while files uploaded manually from a watch keep it. Garmin has not said whether files fetched with a personal key are complete. One Intervals.icu forum user reported that a file downloaded with a personal key was identical to the one available from the Connect website, a finding we have not been able to check.
Garmin’s personal-key terms, as quoted by a user on the Intervals.icu forum, say the key may be used only “in connection with applications, services, or tools that you develop or operate for your own use”. How that applies to people who use someone else’s app for their own analysis is not yet clear.
