Garmin Connect Plus, the company’s paid subscription add-on for Garmin smartwatch users, appears to be gaining traction despite a loud wave of backlash from the community. While many dedicated Garmin fans have criticized the idea of locking new tools behind a paywall, recent comments from Garmin leadership suggest the subscription strategy isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Garmin has long built its reputation on premium-priced wearables paired with a robust, free companion platform. Garmin Connect has traditionally offered deep workout tracking, training insights, and a full web interface for reviewing and analyzing performance data. For a lot of customers, that combination created an expectation: pay more upfront for the watch, then enjoy a feature-rich software experience without ongoing fees. The arrival of Garmin Connect Plus has challenged that unspoken agreement, and that’s a major reason some users have reacted so strongly.
So what does Garmin Connect Plus include? The subscription introduces several “extra” features designed to expand what users can do with their health and fitness data. These include diet tracking tools such as a food log and camera-based logging, more personalized recommendations, AI-driven insights, and a Performance Dashboard that allows users to build custom charts. Garmin has also been using the subscription tier as a place to roll out new AI features, reinforcing the sense that innovation may increasingly sit behind a monthly or yearly payment.
Even with the controversy, Garmin’s executives are signaling confidence in recurring revenue. During a recent investor call, Garmin President and CEO Cliff Pemble addressed the company’s focus on expanding subscription-based income. He emphasized that Garmin wants to grow recurring revenue and continue developing the business model around it. Importantly, he indicated that Garmin’s subscription business is growing at least as fast as the company overall, and possibly faster.
That said, subscriptions are still a relatively small slice of the bigger picture. According to Pemble, subscription services currently make up less than 10% of Garmin’s total revenue. Still, the growth rate matters: it suggests that services like Garmin Connect Plus are helping subscriptions become a more meaningful part of Garmin’s future—especially as the wearables market becomes more competitive and hardware upgrades alone may not be enough to sustain long-term growth.
Garmin Connect Plus is also not the company’s only paid service. Garmin offers other subscription products, such as Outdoor Maps Plus and inReach satellite communication services, which contribute to that expanding recurring revenue base. Together, these services hint at a broader strategy where Garmin increasingly complements device sales with ongoing software and service subscriptions.
For Garmin smartwatch owners, the debate is likely to continue: are premium subscription features a fair way to fund new development and AI tools, or do they undermine what made Garmin’s ecosystem appealing in the first place? What seems clear is that Garmin Connect Plus isn’t fading away—and its early success could shape how Garmin delivers new features going forward.
