Withings Puts Apple Health Sync Behind a $99.99-a-Year Plan for Accounts Made After October 12
Software / news
Withings Puts Apple Health Sync Behind a $99.99-a-Year Plan for Accounts Made After October 12
Existing accounts keep free syncing. The 149-point Hacker News thread is mostly people who bought a Withings device for exactly that feature.
Withings now requires a paid Withings+ membership for Apple Health syncing on accounts created on or after October 12, 2026, according to Gadgets & Wearables. The plan costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year in the US.
Ivan Jovin reported the change on October 13. Withings has put the requirement on the "Start for Free" tier of its API plans, and the article says accounts created after the cutoff "will need a membership to share health data with a free-plan app, including apps that are already live." Apple Health and Google's health-sharing system are both covered, so routing data through one platform does not avoid the charge.
Who pays and who does not
Accounts created before October 12 are exempt, so a current owner of a Withings Body scale sees no change. Enterprise plans are exempt for specific use cases, per the article.
The person who loses is the new buyer who mixes brands: a Withings scale, an Apple Watch and Apple Health as the place everything lands. Jovin names the BodyScan 2, ScanWatch 2 and a Body scale as devices affected. His report adds that some users who switched on Apple Health export for a Body scale were shown a Withings+ subscription screen.
The sticking point is the free-plan line. Withings did not remove Apple Health sync. It reclassified the sync as something the free API plan cannot carry for a new account, which leaves the hardware working and the data trapped in Withings' own app unless the buyer pays.
What $99.99 a year amounts to
| Plan | Price in the US | Cost over 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Withings+ monthly | $9.99 | $119.88 |
| Withings+ annual | $99.99 | $99.99 |
| Existing account, Apple Health sync | $0 | $0 |
Twelve monthly payments come to $119.88, so the annual plan saves $19.89, or 16.6 percent. For a household with several devices, the membership is a yearly charge on top of hardware already bought.
- Monthly plan119.88 USD
- Annual plan99.99 USD
Source: Gadgets & Wearables, October 13, 2026; totals calculated from the listed prices
For another paywall with a date attached, see Figma's code layers, free to edit on paid plans only until November 4.
What Withings says, and what is unconfirmed
According to Gadgets & Wearables, Withings says subscription revenue helps fund clinical validation, regulatory work and its health platform infrastructure. The article distinguishes that from charging for analysis: Withings already charges for extras such as the StethO Sense feature for BeamO, and Jovin argues that charging to move a user's own data is a different thing.
The policy text sits on Withings' developer API plans page. That page redirected to the developer home page when fetched for this story, so the terms here rest on Gadgets & Wearables' summary and on the Hacker News thread. The thread links a Withings support-forum post titled "Unacceptable: Apple Health Sync is now behind a 99-year paywall for new accounts", which returned HTTP 403 and could not be read. No Withings announcement was found.
The Hacker News reaction, October 15
The thread, posted on October 15 at 19:55 UTC under the title "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing", had 150 points and 118 comments when the lead sheet captured it. The title rounds $99.99 down.
User nonfamous wrote: "Saving my data in Apple Health is the primary reason I bought those devices." User kstrauser predicted the requirement would reach "new devices added to existing accounts" within a year, which is a prediction and not something Withings has announced. User js2, a long-time owner, wrote that the change "doesn't affect me... for now."
Commenters named workarounds: Home Assistant integrations, the open-source openScale project, and entering readings by hand from a scale with no cloud. None of those replaces automatic sync with Apple Health. For another workaround story on the Apple side, see how xtool 1.22.2 fixed Apple ID login.
The open question is the existing-account exemption. Withings has not said whether it ends, and the first test will be the next new device an old account adds.
Sources
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