Withings is paywalling third-party syncing, and users are rightfully mad about it

Smart health hardware these days has increasingly leaned on recurring software subscriptions to further monetize the user base, but Withings’ latest move is now crossing a line. If you pick up a Withings smart scale or hybrid smartwatch today hoping to route your health metrics into Apple Health or Google Health Connect for broader health tracking, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise: seamless data syncing to these platforms is no longer free.

Withings responded to a customer complaint thread, announcing that the company has officially moved automatic third-party app syncing behind its paid Withings Plus subscription tier for any accounts created on or after October 13, 2026.

While the initial outrage from customers was around Apple Health sync, the change also applies to Android users relying on Google Health Connect. From now on, automatically pushing weight, body composition, sleep metrics, or heart rates collected from Withings devices into Google Health Connect or Apple Health requires coughing up for Withings Plus, which costs around $99.50 a year or $9.95 per month.

As Withings clarified, existing users are grandfathered in and retain free automatic sync to third-party services. This exemption is tied to your Withings account rather than any physical device, so you can purchase new hardware without triggering the paywall. However, such a move erodes customer confidence in the product ecosystem and casts doubt on the future. As an owner of a Withings Body Smart scale myself, I’d think twice about a new Withings purchase despite the grandfathering.

Newly registered users receive a standard trial period to test Withings Plus features. However, once the trial lapses, automatic syncing will pause.

The silver lining for new and future Withings users is that their data isn’t completely held hostage (yet). All users can still manually export their historical health records as CSV or PDF without a subscription. All users can continue to import data from other services into the Withings app and share clinical health reports with physicians.

Withings isn’t the first smart health brand to try and monetize its ecosystem beyond the hardware. However, in terms of monetization, other smart health brands monetize predictive analytics and AI-based coaching features rather than holding data hostage. Automatic syncing to wider Apple and Google platforms feels like a core feature to me — my daily weight check-ins through my Withings Body Smart scale come right after the daily workouts that are tracked through an Apple Watch and are read together with my daily sleep scores to give me a holistic overview of how my body has progressed over the months. Without (free) automatic syncing back into the wider platform, I have a harder time recommending the smart scale to new users. User sentiment in Withings’ support thread echoes my own, as expected.