Garmin has stopped taking new applications to the Garmin Connect Developer Program. The application form was replaced by an "Under Construction" page in spring 2026, there is no reopening date, and there is no waiting list to join.
If Garmin support is on your roadmap, here is what the pause covers, what it leaves alone, and how to ship a Garmin integration anyway.
[See the Garmin integration →](https://platform.stridee.com/integrations/garmin)
## What Garmin has said
Not much. In a reply on its developer forum, Garmin wrote:
> The application form for new API access requests is currently unavailable while we complete updates to the Garmin Connect Developer Program. During this transition, new access requests are temporarily paused.
That is the whole statement. No date, and nothing that notifies you when the form comes back, so anyone waiting has to keep checking [developer.garmin.com](https://developer.garmin.com/) themselves. The forum has months of threads from developers asking whether it has reopened.
## What the pause covers
The program is the gate in front of Garmin's five cloud APIs:
| API | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| Health API | Daily summaries: sleep, steps, heart rate, stress, HRV |
| Activity API | Recorded activities and their FIT files |
| Women's Health API | Cycle and pregnancy tracking |
| Training API | Sends structured workouts to Garmin Connect |
| Courses API | Sends routes to the device |
All five sit behind the same application, so all five are closed to newcomers.
**If you are already approved, nothing has changed.** Existing integrations keep working and Garmin has not announced that any access is being withdrawn. Connect IQ, the SDK for apps that run on the watch itself, is a separate programme and is not part of this.
**If you are not approved, there is no route in.** Your users being willing to share their data does not help: user consent and developer approval are two separate things, and you need both.
## Your three options
**1. Wait.** It costs nothing and it has no date. If Garmin is a nice-to-have, this is fine. If a customer is asking for it, a launch plan that depends on an unannounced reopening is not a plan.
**2. Read Garmin data from somewhere else.** Most Garmin users also sync to Strava, so the Strava API looks like a way round. It comes with an athlete cap, a daily quota and terms that restrict what you may show and to whom, and it carries activities only: no sleep, no HRV, and no way to send a workout to the watch. We wrote up the trade [here](https://platform.stridee.com/compare/strava-api).
**3. Use an API from a company that is already approved.** The integration is theirs. Your users still consent on Garmin's own screen, and the data reaches you through the provider's API rather than Garmin's. This is the only option that gives you Garmin's full data this month.
## Choosing a provider
Terra published [their own piece on the pause](https://tryterra.co/blog/garmin-connect-developer-program-pause), and their advice is sound as far as it goes: plan for more than one manufacturer, and do not put a date on anything Garmin controls. Their answer to "what now" is Terra. Ours is Stridee. So here is the comparison, including the part we lose.
| | Terra | Stridee |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Garmin | Live | Live |
| Starting price | $399 a month billed annually | 39 € a month, or 32.50 € billed annually |
| Free trial | None published | 14 days, nothing charged until it ends |
| What is metered | Credits: 200 per connected user per month | Nothing. A plan covers a number of connected users |
| Workout push | An add-on, from $99 a month | On every plan |
| Sources | Hundreds, including Oura, WHOOP and Samsung Health | Eight: Garmin, COROS, Polar, Wahoo, Zepp, Hammerhead, Fitbit and Apple Health |
The Terra figures are from their own pricing page as of 28 August 2026. Check them before you decide, because prices move.
**Terra is the better choice when breadth is the requirement.** Rings, smart scales, Samsung Health, lab reports and health scores are their product, and we do not sell any of them.
**Stridee is the better choice when the thing you are blocked on is Garmin**, or sports watches in general. You get the same Garmin data at about a tenth of the entry price, you can try it for two weeks before paying, and sending workouts back to the watch is included. The full arithmetic is on [Stridee vs Terra](https://platform.stridee.com/compare/terra-api).
## What you get from Garmin through Stridee
- **Activities.** Every finished activity arrives as an `activity.created` webhook with the sport, start time, device and a link to Garmin's own FIT file.
- **Wellness.** Sleep with stages and score, daily steps and resting heart rate, overnight HRV, stress and Body Battery, VO₂max, respiration, pulse ox and more: twelve kinds in all, each as its own event.
- **Workout push.** `POST /v1/workouts` puts a structured session on the athlete's watch and calendar. Running, cycling, swimming and strength are all covered.
- **Route push.** `POST /v1/routes` sends a GPX, TCX or FIT file to the watch as a course.
- **History.** When the athlete allows historical export on Garmin's consent screen, past activities are replayed going back up to five years.
What is not live yet: laps and per-second streams parsed into JSON (they are inside the FIT file today), and the Women's Health data. [Provider support & limits](https://platform.stridee.com/docs/providers) has the full list, and it is generated from the constants the API enforces.
## How it works
There is no Garmin application, no client secret and no OAuth callback on your side.
1. Your backend calls `POST /v1/connect` with `"provider": "garmin"` and your own id for the user.
2. You redirect the user to the `connect_url` that comes back. They approve on Garmin's consent screen.
3. Their activities and health data start arriving at your webhook, encrypted to a key only you hold.
```json
{
"provider": "garmin",
"external_user_id": "user_4821",
"return_uri": "https://app.yourapp.com/settings/devices"
}
```
The [quickstart](https://platform.stridee.com/docs/quickstart) takes about fifteen minutes and needs no public URL: the CLI forwards real deliveries to localhost.
## What the pause does not change
Two things still apply to you, whichever route you take.
- **Your users have to consent.** Each one approves the connection on Garmin's own screen and chooses what to share. Nobody can skip that for you, and nobody should.
- **Garmin's attribution rules follow the data.** Garmin's [API Brand Guidelines](https://developer.garmin.com/downloads/brand/Garmin-Developer-API-Brand-Guidelines.pdf) require you to credit Garmin wherever its data appears, including in exports and in figures you derived from it. That holds when the data reached you through someone else's API.
## Start building
Every plan includes a 14-day free trial, and every plan is the whole API.
- [Garmin integration](https://platform.stridee.com/integrations/garmin)
- [Quickstart](https://platform.stridee.com/docs/quickstart)
- [Pricing](https://platform.stridee.com/pricing)
- [Stridee vs Terra](https://platform.stridee.com/compare/terra-api)
Garmin paused its developer program. You can still ship a Garmin integration
New applications to the Garmin Connect Developer Program are closed with no reopening date. What that means and how to add Garmin to your app anyway.