@david – two questions that decide a lot for self-hosted users: (1) will the block apply to an athlete’s own personal API key as well, or only to OAuth apps? (2) Activities an athlete uploads themselves (e.g. the original FIT fetched from their own Garmin account, as garmin-intervals-bridge does in its upload mode) are the athlete’s own files, not data delivered through Garmin’s partner API – I’d assume those stay accessible, as do custom wellness fields the athlete writes. Could you confirm?
For reference, the clause behind this seems to be 5.1(o) of the Connect Developer Program Agreement (no “Licensee application programming interface to provide End User Data to third-party … services … not approved by Garmin in writing”). If it comes to that, the garmin-intervals-bridge already has an upload mode (official import off, originals uploaded as the athlete’s own files) – happy to make that the recommended setup.
This is really bad news, certainly because Garmin has also completely closed off any new integrations on its own platform. This will seriously impact my app.
Is it possible to share the clause change to the terms and conditions? Trying to understand where it comes from and if other players (like strava for example) will be impacted. This will seriously impact my app.
Yes it’s terrible. Intervals.icu has had an open API for at least 5 years now and this will cause a great deal of harm for many coaching businesses, apps and individuals.
I haven’t managed to find the new T&C’s on the public internet, only in the portal popup, so I don’t want to paste something that Garmin might consider confidential.
Garmin have been working on ‘improvements’, they stopped access to their API to new users - I guess this is one of the changes. One thing that is highly annoying - even as a personal user getting that data into other tools is not straight forward and with Strava also locking this down, will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I think it´s the second step after buying TrainingPeaks to increase SAAS turnover.
This will give huge impact to a lot of coaching softwares and companys since intervals.icu will not be the only plattform affected by this.
Honestly I still hope for an exception that works fine for all of us.
@nicobrahim – the publicly downloadable Connect Developer Program Agreement on the developer portal (FRM-0952 Rev. B, file dated March 2026) already contains a clause 5.1(o) that forbids a licensee API passing end-user data on to third-party services Garmin hasn’t approved in writing. Whether the portal popup David saw goes further, only Garmin knows.
I have been asking Garmin for months now about their developer program. There has been nothing but a standard, canned response back. This is really unfortunate and will give a bad experience to many users. Does anyone have information on what their new policy is going to be?
Urgh, Garmin falling into the same trap Strava did, of treating our data like it belongs to them.
I cancelled my Strava account when they did this, unfortunately I’ve only just bought a new watch so it’ll be a while before I can disengage myself fully.
Absolutely disgusting behaviour.
Edit: What are the odds that this gets added to Connect+?
Not great news! It gives me a huge incentive to sell all my Garmin hardware and switch to a competitor. It’s disappointing to play by their rules only to have further restrictions put on your data.
same here … as Strava rolled out their API restrictions I canceled my Abo the same day …
Unfortunately not that easy with Garmin as I’m 100% into the Garmin Universe …
Thanks @david for keeping everyone informed. We run NØRVE on top of the Intervals API, so we’re in the same boat as many here. In the meantime we’re adding athlete-reported session RPE × duration in check-ins as a device-independent load measure, so coaching decisions don’t rely on a single data source. Curious how others will handle this.
In regards to your point 3, maybe my understanding is too naive but I always assumed that these metrics are intervals.icu metrics - sure Garmin based activites will influence these but in the end it is an intervals.icu metric that has its own underlying logic etc. and, (I hope) should be still available.
I really hope for a lot of coaches and app developers but in the first case our community and users that the wellness-sync GARMIN doesn’t stop: HRV, rest HR, sleep & VO2max are data we really need to help and service users.
