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For most people, no. Garmin Connect+ is a $6.99/month (or $69.99/year) add-on that Garmin itself describes as sitting on top of a Connect app that "remains free," and that's accurate: heart rate, sleep stages, Body Battery, GPS activity tracking, and basic Garmin Coach all stay exactly as free as they were before Connect+ launched. What you're paying for is an AI-driven insights layer (Active Intelligence), deeper performance-comparison dashboards, expanded LiveTrack sharing, exclusive coaching guidance, and social features like badge challenges. If you already read your own sleep and training data and don't want an AI assistant narrating it back to you, there's genuinely nothing new to unlock. If you want Garmin to interpret the numbers for you, that's specifically what the $6.99 buys.
What Actually Changed When Connect+ Launched
Garmin watches have never required a subscription for their core features, and Connect+ didn’t change that. Per Garmin’s own announcement, “all existing features and data in Garmin Connect will remain free,” a line the company repeated twice in its launch materials, seemingly anticipating the exact confusion this keyword implies. Nothing that used to be free moved behind the new paywall. Connect+ is additive: a new tier stacked on top of the free app, not a replacement for it.
That’s a meaningfully different situation from Peloton or WHOOP, where paying is required to get most of what the hardware is for. Garmin’s paid tier is closer to a bonus feature set than a gate.
What Stays Free, No Matter What
Every core metric a Garmin device tracks is still free: 24/7 heart rate, HRV status, sleep stages and a sleep score, Body Battery energy tracking, GPS-based activity tracking across 30+ built-in sports profiles, basic Garmin Coach adaptive training plans, standard LiveTrack, music storage and Garmin Pay where supported, and the full Connect IQ app store. If you bought a Garmin watch expecting the data it’s always advertised as tracking, none of that got locked away.
What Connect+ Actually Adds
Garmin Connect (free)
- Heart rate, sleep, Body BatteryIncluded
- GPS activity trackingIncluded
- Garmin CoachIncluded
- AI-generated insightsNot included
Garmin Connect+
- Active Intelligence (AI insights)Included
- Performance dashboardsIncluded
- Expanded LiveTrack + badgesIncluded
- Free trial30 days
Pricing confirmed directly from Garmin’s own launch press release (garmin.com/en-US/newsroom), cross-checked against three independent 2026 trackers (TrackerVS, Android Authority, Tom’s Guide) on September 16, 2026, all reporting the same $6.99/month or $69.99/year figures with no price change since the subscription’s 2025 debut.
Specifically, Connect+ includes: Active Intelligence, an AI feature (currently rolling out in stages) that generates personalized daily insights and suggestions from your existing health and activity data; a performance dashboard with customizable graphs comparing training and health metrics across custom date ranges, available on the Connect web platform; live activity viewing, where your phone shows real-time heart rate, pace, and rep counts with workout videos during indoor sessions; exclusive coaching guidance including video content from Garmin coaches; expanded LiveTrack, letting you share a followable live page during an activity rather than a link sent to a fixed list of contacts; and social features like profile frames and badge challenges only available to subscribers.
- Who should NOT subscribe: anyone satisfied reading their own sleep and training trends without a narrative layer on top, since none of the underlying data changes. If you already check your Body Battery and sleep score and make your own call on whether to train hard or rest, Connect+ doesn’t add information you don’t already have.
- Who it’s right for: people who want the app to actively tell them “you’re under-recovered, take it easy today” instead of inferring that themselves from a Body Battery number, and anyone who does a lot of indoor training and wants real-time stats from their phone during a session rather than reviewing everything after the fact.
How It Compares to Oura, WHOOP, and Fitbit’s Paid Tiers
Garmin joining Oura, WHOOP, and Fitbit in offering a paid tier invites the obvious comparison, but the shape of each company’s paywall is different, and none of these subscriptions pay us a commission, we’re not selling any of them.
Our Oura Ring without a subscription guide covers a company where the free tier is the thinnest of the four: three core scores remain, but sleep-stage detail, HRV trends, and third-party API access all get cut off without membership. Our WHOOP without a subscription guide covers the opposite extreme: there’s no free tier at all, since WHOOP’s membership fee is bundled into buying the device in the first place. Our Fitbit (now Google Health Premium) without a subscription guide covers a structure closest to Garmin’s: a genuinely usable free tier, with the paid layer adding AI coaching on top rather than gating core metrics.
Garmin’s approach lands closest to Fitbit’s, and further from Oura’s and WHOOP’s: it’s the only one of the four where literally nothing that existed before the subscription launched was moved behind it.
Garmin Vívoactive 5
Heart rate, sleep coaching, Body Battery, and 30+ sport apps, all included with no subscription. 4.3★ (12,000+ ratings).
The 30-Day Trial Is Genuinely Auto-Renewing
Garmin offers a 30-day free trial of Connect+ before either the monthly or annual charge kicks in. Like most trials of this shape, it auto-renews into a paid subscription unless you cancel before it ends, so it’s worth setting a reminder if you’re trying it purely out of curiosity rather than because you’ve already decided the AI insights are worth $6.99 a month.
FAQ
Did Garmin move any previously free features behind Connect+? No. Garmin’s own launch materials state existing features and data remain free, and that has held since the subscription’s 2025 debut, no earlier free feature has since been repositioned as Connect+-only.
What’s the actual price of Garmin Connect+? $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year, confirmed directly from Garmin’s press release and unchanged as of September 2026 across multiple independent trackers.
Does Connect+ unlock new sensors or hardware capabilities? No. It adds AI-generated insights, dashboards, and social/coaching features built from data your device already collects for free; it doesn’t add new metrics your watch wasn’t already measuring.
Do I need a specific Garmin watch model to use Connect+? Connect+ is a subscription to the Garmin Connect app and platform rather than a hardware feature, so it isn’t limited to a single watch line, though very old or unsupported models may have app compatibility limits worth checking on Garmin’s own device-compatibility pages before subscribing.
Bottom Line
- If you read your own sleep and training data and don’t need it explained to you: skip Connect+. Every metric you’re used to checking stays free.
- If you want AI-generated daily insights and deeper performance dashboards: $6.99/month or $69.99/year adds that layer, with a 30-day trial to test it first.
- If you’re comparing Garmin’s model to Oura or WHOOP’s: Garmin’s free tier is the most complete of the three, it’s the only one where nothing pre-existing was paywalled to make room for the new subscription.
If you’re also weighing a paid tier for a smart scale, see Does a Withings Scale Require a Subscription?.