Garmin goes subscription with AI-powered Connect Plus

For years, buying a serious sports watch meant a hefty upfront payment and zero monthly bills. Now, even the most traditional hardware holdouts are eyeing recurring revenue.

Garmin just announced Garmin Connect Plus, a new paid subscription tier that brings AI-powered coaching and personalized insights to its ecosystem of fitness trackers and smartwatches.

The service costs $7 a month or $70 annually, with a 30-day free trial. If you already use the Garmin Connect app, do not panic yet. The company confirmed that all existing features and tracking data will remain completely free.

What $7 a month actually buys you

Garmin claims Connect Plus will crunch your health and activity metrics throughout the day to dish out actionable tips and observations. It also adds customizable long-term charts so you can spot training trends, and Garmin promises the advice will get smarter the longer you wear the watch.

Subscribers also get expanded LiveTrack capabilities. Once you start a workout, you can share real-time heart rate and pace data directly with friends or family.

Rounding out the bundle are educational training videos, tips from social media fitness experts, and exclusive digital badges for hitting specific workout milestones.

Garmin is obviously playing catch-up to the broader wearable market. Whoop and Strava have already turned to AI for custom summaries and workout planning, while Oura uses an AI chatbot to translate sleep and biometric trends. Google and Samsung are pursuing similar playbooks.

ABI Research director David McQueen noted that AI features in wearables have largely been confined to premium tier devices, but expect rivals to push them down into cheaper hardware soon.

Why it matters

We think Garmin's decision to jump on the subscription bandwagon is a delicate balancing act that highlights the limits of pure hardware sales.

For existing athletes, we do not think there is any rush to subscribe. Garmin gained its loyal fanbase largely because it was not Oura or Whoop; you bought the expensive watch, and the data was yours. Since core tracking remains free, most casual runners should stick to the base app and maybe only test the 30-day trial to see if the AI insights genuinely offer value beyond standard training metrics.

For the industry, smart rings have normalized monthly fees, but traditional smartwatch buyers still push back aggressively against paywalls. Garmin is cleverly treading lightly by walling off AI layers rather than core GPS stats.

The catch is differentiation. If the AI advice feels generic or hallucinates recovery times, users will quickly cancel. Paying $70 a year for essentially an LLM summarizing your sleep graph and some digital badges might be a tough sell for people who already dropped $800 on a Forerunner.