Polar joins the paywall era with new Fitness Program
Polar now offers a €9.99 per month Fitness Program subscription. The announcement coincides with the start of FIBO 2025, the major fitness and wellness event in Cologne. It also comes just weeks after Garmin introduced its own paid tier, Connect+, which drew backlash from some users.
In the lead-up to the event, Polar teased a new launch. We were hoping for a Whoop competitor—a screenless band focused on recovery and continuous tracking. What arrived instead was not quite as exciting: a paid tier inside the Polar Flow app.
Polar introduces Fitness Program paid tier
This new offering is entirely app-based. It promises adaptive and guided training tailored to the user, with weekly feedback and a new training plan every four weeks. Polar calls it the Fitness Program, and it’s being positioned as a premium training service aimed at people who want structured help without needing to follow a generic plan.
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You can try it for free for 14 days, and if you cancel your subscription you still get access to the content until your current billing cycle ends. That part is fairly standard. What’s more interesting is that this marks a shift in how Polar sees the value it offers.
Until now, one of the things Polar fans could hold on to was that, unlike some rivals, all features were available without a subscription. That has now officially changed. While the Fitness Program doesn’t lock away existing features, it does introduce the idea that new experiences might live behind a paywall. It’s a line that, once crossed, tends to shift expectations both for users and for the company itself.
The timing is also worth noting. Just weeks ago, Garmin announced its new Connect+ subscription, a more wide-ranging service that includes things like advanced AI insights, badges, and additional analytics. The reaction was mixed. Many users felt alienated by the idea of having to pay for tools they assumed would remain free. Some looked to Polar as a safe haven, a company still offering the full experience up front.
Now Polar has its own paid tier. To be fair, this isn’t quite the same thing. The Fitness Program is more narrowly focused. It’s not about gating off metrics or existing features. It’s a separate service designed for people who want structured training. In that context, it makes some sense to charge for it. Creating and maintaining personalized, evolving plans isn’t trivial.
Still, this opens the door. Even if Polar users aren’t losing access to anything yet, there will be questions about what comes next. Will recovery metrics eventually require a fee? Will deeper analysis of sleep or readiness be part of a premium tier in the future? Garmin users are already asking similar questions about Connect+. It’s not just about the features on offer now, but the ones that might come later.
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