New Withings accounts need a paid plan to sync with Apple Health

The line falls on October 13

Withings has put automatic syncing to Apple Health and Google Health Connect behind its Withings+ subscription for new accounts. The cutoff is the account's creation date, not the purchase date: accounts created on or after October 13, 2026 need the plan, and accounts created on or before October 12 keep free syncing — including when their owner buys a new Withings device later.

The US price is roughly $99 a year; outlets cite $99.50 and $99.99. The change surfaced in a Withings community thread whose author called it a cash grab, and was picked up by MacRumors, AppleInsider and Android Authority.

What Withings says, and what a free account still gets

A reply in that thread marked as official confirmed the change: after October 13, automatic sync to third-party apps is part of Withings+. The company's position is that its mission has not changed and that the subscription funds the services built around user data.

The restriction is tied to Withings' developer API tiers, so routing through Apple Health or Google's health-sharing layer does not get around it. An Enterprise plan lifts it for specific use cases.

A free account is not locked out of its own numbers. It keeps full access inside the Withings app, and history can still be exported by hand as CSV or PDF. What disappears is the automatic handoff — the reason most people connect a scale to Apple Health in the first place.

Workarounds exist, and so does a prediction that they will not last

Reverse-engineered syncing showed up in the thread within hours. A developer who publishes an open-source Withings client wrote that they do not own the scale but have the watch protocol:

"Been using my implementation exclusively for months, seems fine." — developer who publishes an open-source Withings client

That covers the watch, and they expect the scale protocol to be similar. A self-described pseudonymous coder thought the window would not stay open:

"…once companies catch on that reverse engineering is taking off in a big way, they're going to panic and start demanding cryptographically-sealed binaries with remote attestation everywhere." — self-described pseudonymous coder with 19k karma

Why Withings would take the risk was spelled out by a commenter with 11k karma: "If 50% of customers stop buying the $40 scales and the other half start paying $99 annually, this is an absolutely no-brainer from a revenue perspective" Those economics mean the rule is unlikely to be reversed. For a buyer, the date check comes first: an account created before October 13 keeps free syncing, and any other account should price the scale at its hardware cost plus roughly $99 a year, or at the cost of maintaining an unofficial client that the vendor can break.