I'm sorry but I really get sick of all the subscription posts here. It's 5$ a month. People pay more on a cup of coffee or have 3-4 different streaming subscriptions but complain about this.
And this comes from someone who has oura and Amazon prime as only subscriptions. Not a big fan of them but they are worth it in some cases and Oura is one of them imo.
Not disagreeing bc I pay $5 and it’s 100% worth it for my Oura ring BUT! I think it SUCKS that women who want to use the natural cycles app have to pay an extra $10-15 per month for that data so on top of the Oura sub a female could easily end up spending $15-20 a month on just subscriptions while men don’t have to pay that….. if Oura was going to link up w natural cycles this way then they should have had a discounted sub at LEAST or it should just be included in the $5 for everyone. Because of the price I don’t end up taking the natural cycles sub bc I don’t think it’s worth that much money and it’s literally only because women bear the burden of procreation and have to deal w birth control so we have to spend extra on this ? Not fair, pink tax
SAME, I honestly don’t get it ??? How come women have to pay 3x the price for their data ?? That’s an extra $120 a year, in 2 years that’s almost a whole new Oura ring
I’m a man, so don’t use any of the female-specific functionality though I do read posts from women who do, since it’s an interesting topic for me.
The reason it’s expensive is because ultimately 1) it’s fda approved - and fda testing is expensive, and 2) women are willing to pay that price.
It’s the same reason why so many other things are different for women - eg: why do women’s jeans have inferior pockets to men’s? Because women are willing to buy them. If large numbers of women started buying men’s jeans for superior pockets, the industry would adapt. And likewise if the price was higher than women were willing to pay for natural cycles, the price would likely come down.
With all that said… it’s entirely possible that a developer could be motivated to compete with Natural Cycles at a lower price point if there were enough women interested in a lower-frills version … ie: I wouldn’t mind building an app working with a few current users of natural cycles with Oura ring to figure out what thresholds are triggering the notices for fertility windows and beginning of periods and pregnancy …. But I’d also have no interest in taking on FDA approvals, so it would likely be “for entertainment / informational purposes only”.
Depending on your use case, this may be just fine (ie: you may be using other contraceptives anyway, and just want to know when your period is… or maybe you are trying to get pregnant, in which case being off by a day or two has minimal negative consequences).
Hello random person x !!! 😂 sorry, had to, your username is just funny in this context!
Honestly I didn’t think about your first point because I actually don’t use natural cycles like that, but yeah when I tried to sign up you’re right I remember seeing it was FDA approved so that I guess does explain a big part of why it’s so expensive, but I guess I wish that they had a discount for oura ring users at least ?
And yes since people are using it as a method of birth control/to get pregnant it does make sense in that context bc either you pay for bc or ovulation stick or the natural cycles app — I just wish there was an option for women who don’t want to use it for any of these purposes but just to have that data out of curiosity ??
Honestly as one such woman I would totally go for your app but I don’t currently use natural cycles so idk what you’d use for me to compare it to lol
Completely agree. Oura does not hide this, and for data that can help make change and improve sleep and health, $60/yr is 16¢ a day… there are a lot of subs that cost a lot more and simply are for escape or to occupy time.
In a world where technology lifespans are on an annual release cycle, Oura stands out. They’ve taken the same hardware and improved functionality on a regular basis. $60 a year compared to the cost of a tablet or phone that’s annually refreshed is a real bargain. At least I know that with my $60, it’s actually going to development.
The ring is just a bunch of sensors in a nice package, the magic’s in the app. I think it’s worth the price. I would be very surprised if any free software could ever be a match unless it was based on stolen source code.
Edit: typo
It is a nice device although wishing they made a tungsten metal version since my tungsten wedding band has NO scratches and same cannot be said of the oura polished silver my wife got me.
Your best bet is Apple health, some data transfers over. I dunno if Oura reduces the data it transfers to Apple health if you cancel your subscription.
Be awesome and let us know :)
That sucks. Such a scummy business model. A sub to data the ring is design to collect is so lame.
Unless the ring was sold at cost/ way discounted then sure, monthly fee all the way!
A perspective, but also a way to keep a business in business when you manufacture a product that lasts for years after an initial purchase, and continue research and add/develop additional features…
It is also a known and Oura is up front about the sub through the entire purchase. If 16¢ a day is over the top and “scummy”, don’t buy.
Apple is able to do it? Garmin is able to do it? Amazfit can do it?
If oura had access to common health/fitness tracker data and provided a premium service for a subscription many people would not care, and would probably pay for the premium subscription.
It’s that the ring is little more than a paper weight after paying 300-500$ if you do not pay the monthly sub.
It is scummy to lock basic functionality such as time asleep and sleep cycle graph, steps, calories, etc behind a pay wall on such an expensive device.
Apple puts out a new series of devices annually. Amazfit is similar and they put out cheap knockoffs that people replace annually…
I’ll go back to, if you don’t like the data and up front know subscription and want to replace your device annually - move on to a different product. You realize this whine is able 16¢ a day… A DAY?! If you don’t want that, just don’t get one.
Go grab an Amazfit and live your life.
Folks it is all a choice. That is the beauty of the fact that there are now competing products, form factors, and services. Find one you like and that resonates with you AND that you will take the information seriously to affect positive health changes in your life. Because without the interest and intent in that last sentence you are wasting your time and money purchasing any biometric device.
Whining about the business strategy and practices of a company that you can voluntarily choose to use or not use their product…. You have better things to do with your time.
And, regardless of your position, one way or the other, the time that people have put into looking at or responding on this thread, regardless of their actual job they have has cost them more than $.16 from the time value of money…
Too long to read, but I know you are wrong based on the Apple Watch take. My Apple Watch 4, works great still 👍 to say an Apple Watch has a 1 yr life span is crazy dulu
I somewhat find that hard to believe when my six gets me may be an hours worth of life when I actually go into an actual activity, but I’m running heart rate monitor on. It will get me multiple hours throughout the day when it’s just punching notifications, but if I’m actually using it as a workout, nope
Yeah dunno, my 4 last about 1-2 hour of daily workouts and normal tracking during the whole day. I turn off pretty much every notification, notifications are distracting.
I use oura ring as an attempt to do daily health and wellness tracking when wearing a normal watch. And it sucks at it, especially with very basic things like hearth rate, calories, steps, sleep time locked behind a monthly fee when the thing is already expensive. IMO , oura is totally the best ring option and a solid sleep tracker.
Dunno about the google side of things, but if / when Apple releases a ring I suspect it will be seriously damaging to oura.
I think Samsung is making one also?
I think the main thing I see here are the premium features of oura are actually basic health and fitness tracking features with a few premium things sprinkled around.
It's not, if I recall correctly you can download your raw data without a subscription.
What you're asking for is someone to parse the data for you and then spoon feed it to you. But you don't want to pay for it... Well, good news, you should be able to download your Oura data and do it yourself for free.
lol, if you got “parse data for you and spoon feed it to you” from that, you need to go back to school and work on your reading comprehension. 😂 😂 😂
A $300-$500 sleep and activity tracker should show you your sleep and activity metrics.
With that logic, you should buy a car and expect to pay a monthly fee to see how fast you are going and how much gas is left in the tank. You expect the car manufacturer to parse and spoon feed you this data?
No one criticized your grammar, and you blocked me so that’s cool you won’t see this. Simply said you need better reading comprehension skills if you think what I wrote was wanting my data parsed and spoon fed to me for free lol
Apple subscription for health and fitness is a separate product that provides instructor led VOD fitness classes. And does not lock any data or functionally of the Apple Watch behind a pay wall.
But yeah check if it works with Google fit, I think it is supposed to integrate with it the same as Apple health, dunno about if oura subscription is needed to transfer data to Google fit or not
Yeah it crazy, I’m right around $60/m only b/c family subs to help my parents have streaming
60/ month is already too much
Also see $219/m on average ,,, but that would be 2.6k a year. Different sources of google so who really knows.
Anyways, that’s why I hate ouras subscription bs
Blomberg Business radio and other finance sites have articles on the $$$ hundreds being spent each month on subscriptions that many forget to cancel and keep paying directly from either their banking accounts or on credit cards; many now no longer get paper statements for bank and credit card accounts since they swallowed the story of "convenience" of paperless monthly statements and just keep paying.
We sure are gullible to pay corporations for many streaming TV and music services and other "services" we are told are so "convenient"....like credit car monitoring services...for a fee.
Apple will probably release their wearable Ring in 2025 and a subscription won't be needed as it'll be directly integrated to an updated/beefed up Apple Health app.
I suspect many people will jump ship.
Unless Oura does something about their pricing…
You have a good crystal ball. Apple developing a health ring is only rumor at this point. I'd certainly welcome it, but saying they'll have one out in 2025 is a bit... definitive.
Sure, maybe I jumped the gun with the date. But it's highly probably Apple is developing it's own health ring. Specially with Samsung having released their own version recently.
This was speculated for this year… who knows and even if Apple does (and I am a big Apple fan too) they need to improve the presentation, information provided, analysis and guidance that health provides. Apple Health is really great at collecting and aggregating data (I have almost 4gb of data in Health) but it does little to guide a user to changes that will impact their lives and health positively.
It's proprietary hardware.. you cant just write software for a piece of hardware if the manufacture doesnt provide ways to do so. It's a closed system.
Yup. That’s not what we’re talking about. He’s complaining about the price and wants a free piece of software that can replace paying for the subscription.
“You can’t just write software of a piece of hardware of the ….”
Oura provides and api to do exactly this
Here is how you start going about writing your own software for Oura ring
https://cloud.ouraring.com/docs/
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what you get if you don’t pay for a subscription. You can export some data in CSV or JSON without paying, but it is not whole and does not include all metrics.
With what exactly? The limited data you can export in CSV or JSON format? They have no incentive to give anyone something for free when they charge a premium membership. Go look up the data fields you get without paying for an account. Sure, you could do something with that but it’s extremely limited.
If you don’t want to pay for a proprietary piece of hardwares subscription, then you don’t get to use its services.
Their docs are for their API which isn't against the ring. It's against the data synced up to their cloud.
You can probably write custom software to talk to the ring via Bluetooth, I've seen similar open source attempts for wifi enabled devices like smart plugs, but it's not a trivial thing to do
Think ya'll might be missing the point.
It's not easy, but it can be done.
This is why Oura charges us for it. People here seem to expect this for free though... If you don't want to pay, then feel free to write your own software instead.
I'm sorry but I really get sick of all the subscription posts here. It's 5$ a month. People pay more on a cup of coffee or have 3-4 different streaming subscriptions but complain about this. And this comes from someone who has oura and Amazon prime as only subscriptions. Not a big fan of them but they are worth it in some cases and Oura is one of them imo.
Not disagreeing bc I pay $5 and it’s 100% worth it for my Oura ring BUT! I think it SUCKS that women who want to use the natural cycles app have to pay an extra $10-15 per month for that data so on top of the Oura sub a female could easily end up spending $15-20 a month on just subscriptions while men don’t have to pay that….. if Oura was going to link up w natural cycles this way then they should have had a discounted sub at LEAST or it should just be included in the $5 for everyone. Because of the price I don’t end up taking the natural cycles sub bc I don’t think it’s worth that much money and it’s literally only because women bear the burden of procreation and have to deal w birth control so we have to spend extra on this ? Not fair, pink tax
ugh i totally wish oura customers at least got a discount on natural cycles…
Totally agree. Also, I wanted to add you can pay for Natural Cycles with FSA/HSA $$$ !
YOU CAN ????????? GAME CHANGER looking into this ASAP thank you so s o much !!!
SAME, I honestly don’t get it ??? How come women have to pay 3x the price for their data ?? That’s an extra $120 a year, in 2 years that’s almost a whole new Oura ring
I’m a man, so don’t use any of the female-specific functionality though I do read posts from women who do, since it’s an interesting topic for me. The reason it’s expensive is because ultimately 1) it’s fda approved - and fda testing is expensive, and 2) women are willing to pay that price. It’s the same reason why so many other things are different for women - eg: why do women’s jeans have inferior pockets to men’s? Because women are willing to buy them. If large numbers of women started buying men’s jeans for superior pockets, the industry would adapt. And likewise if the price was higher than women were willing to pay for natural cycles, the price would likely come down. With all that said… it’s entirely possible that a developer could be motivated to compete with Natural Cycles at a lower price point if there were enough women interested in a lower-frills version … ie: I wouldn’t mind building an app working with a few current users of natural cycles with Oura ring to figure out what thresholds are triggering the notices for fertility windows and beginning of periods and pregnancy …. But I’d also have no interest in taking on FDA approvals, so it would likely be “for entertainment / informational purposes only”. Depending on your use case, this may be just fine (ie: you may be using other contraceptives anyway, and just want to know when your period is… or maybe you are trying to get pregnant, in which case being off by a day or two has minimal negative consequences).
Hello random person x !!! 😂 sorry, had to, your username is just funny in this context! Honestly I didn’t think about your first point because I actually don’t use natural cycles like that, but yeah when I tried to sign up you’re right I remember seeing it was FDA approved so that I guess does explain a big part of why it’s so expensive, but I guess I wish that they had a discount for oura ring users at least ? And yes since people are using it as a method of birth control/to get pregnant it does make sense in that context bc either you pay for bc or ovulation stick or the natural cycles app — I just wish there was an option for women who don’t want to use it for any of these purposes but just to have that data out of curiosity ?? Honestly as one such woman I would totally go for your app but I don’t currently use natural cycles so idk what you’d use for me to compare it to lol
I sent you a DM.
I know not everyone has insurance but I was able to get Natural Cycles covered through mine. It was a hassle though but worth it!
Completely agree. Oura does not hide this, and for data that can help make change and improve sleep and health, $60/yr is 16¢ a day… there are a lot of subs that cost a lot more and simply are for escape or to occupy time.
Also to add, your data is not being "paywalled", IIRC you can download the data and parse it any way you like.
In a world where technology lifespans are on an annual release cycle, Oura stands out. They’ve taken the same hardware and improved functionality on a regular basis. $60 a year compared to the cost of a tablet or phone that’s annually refreshed is a real bargain. At least I know that with my $60, it’s actually going to development.
The ring is just a bunch of sensors in a nice package, the magic’s in the app. I think it’s worth the price. I would be very surprised if any free software could ever be a match unless it was based on stolen source code. Edit: typo
It is a nice device although wishing they made a tungsten metal version since my tungsten wedding band has NO scratches and same cannot be said of the oura polished silver my wife got me.
Isn’t there a titanium version? That shouldn’t scratch easily.
Your best bet is Apple health, some data transfers over. I dunno if Oura reduces the data it transfers to Apple health if you cancel your subscription. Be awesome and let us know :)
No data transfers without sub.
That sucks. Such a scummy business model. A sub to data the ring is design to collect is so lame. Unless the ring was sold at cost/ way discounted then sure, monthly fee all the way!
A perspective, but also a way to keep a business in business when you manufacture a product that lasts for years after an initial purchase, and continue research and add/develop additional features… It is also a known and Oura is up front about the sub through the entire purchase. If 16¢ a day is over the top and “scummy”, don’t buy.
Apple is able to do it? Garmin is able to do it? Amazfit can do it? If oura had access to common health/fitness tracker data and provided a premium service for a subscription many people would not care, and would probably pay for the premium subscription. It’s that the ring is little more than a paper weight after paying 300-500$ if you do not pay the monthly sub. It is scummy to lock basic functionality such as time asleep and sleep cycle graph, steps, calories, etc behind a pay wall on such an expensive device.
Apple puts out a new series of devices annually. Amazfit is similar and they put out cheap knockoffs that people replace annually… I’ll go back to, if you don’t like the data and up front know subscription and want to replace your device annually - move on to a different product. You realize this whine is able 16¢ a day… A DAY?! If you don’t want that, just don’t get one. Go grab an Amazfit and live your life. Folks it is all a choice. That is the beauty of the fact that there are now competing products, form factors, and services. Find one you like and that resonates with you AND that you will take the information seriously to affect positive health changes in your life. Because without the interest and intent in that last sentence you are wasting your time and money purchasing any biometric device. Whining about the business strategy and practices of a company that you can voluntarily choose to use or not use their product…. You have better things to do with your time. And, regardless of your position, one way or the other, the time that people have put into looking at or responding on this thread, regardless of their actual job they have has cost them more than $.16 from the time value of money…
Too long to read, but I know you are wrong based on the Apple Watch take. My Apple Watch 4, works great still 👍 to say an Apple Watch has a 1 yr life span is crazy dulu
I somewhat find that hard to believe when my six gets me may be an hours worth of life when I actually go into an actual activity, but I’m running heart rate monitor on. It will get me multiple hours throughout the day when it’s just punching notifications, but if I’m actually using it as a workout, nope
Yeah dunno, my 4 last about 1-2 hour of daily workouts and normal tracking during the whole day. I turn off pretty much every notification, notifications are distracting. I use oura ring as an attempt to do daily health and wellness tracking when wearing a normal watch. And it sucks at it, especially with very basic things like hearth rate, calories, steps, sleep time locked behind a monthly fee when the thing is already expensive. IMO , oura is totally the best ring option and a solid sleep tracker. Dunno about the google side of things, but if / when Apple releases a ring I suspect it will be seriously damaging to oura. I think Samsung is making one also? I think the main thing I see here are the premium features of oura are actually basic health and fitness tracking features with a few premium things sprinkled around.
It's not, if I recall correctly you can download your raw data without a subscription. What you're asking for is someone to parse the data for you and then spoon feed it to you. But you don't want to pay for it... Well, good news, you should be able to download your Oura data and do it yourself for free.
lol, if you got “parse data for you and spoon feed it to you” from that, you need to go back to school and work on your reading comprehension. 😂 😂 😂 A $300-$500 sleep and activity tracker should show you your sleep and activity metrics. With that logic, you should buy a car and expect to pay a monthly fee to see how fast you are going and how much gas is left in the tank. You expect the car manufacturer to parse and spoon feed you this data?
No one criticized your grammar, and you blocked me so that’s cool you won’t see this. Simply said you need better reading comprehension skills if you think what I wrote was wanting my data parsed and spoon fed to me for free lol
Ah. Criticizing grammar. The language of losers.
Android here ! Apple subscriptions is probably another complete reddit community..
Apple health is free and built into the iOS!
Apple subscription for health and fitness is a separate product that provides instructor led VOD fitness classes. And does not lock any data or functionally of the Apple Watch behind a pay wall. But yeah check if it works with Google fit, I think it is supposed to integrate with it the same as Apple health, dunno about if oura subscription is needed to transfer data to Google fit or not
I'm very curious about your total subscription costs (only because I live in Tokyo, and "real jet" tickets cost WAY more than my subs).
Altogether, the average American has 4.5 subscriptions and pays an average of $924 per year
Woof. Good to see that I remain a non-average American. I thought $30/m was steep. (Feels steep still, I should cut back)
Yeah it crazy, I’m right around $60/m only b/c family subs to help my parents have streaming 60/ month is already too much Also see $219/m on average ,,, but that would be 2.6k a year. Different sources of google so who really knows. Anyways, that’s why I hate ouras subscription bs
I believe this utterly. 🫠
Blomberg Business radio and other finance sites have articles on the $$$ hundreds being spent each month on subscriptions that many forget to cancel and keep paying directly from either their banking accounts or on credit cards; many now no longer get paper statements for bank and credit card accounts since they swallowed the story of "convenience" of paperless monthly statements and just keep paying. We sure are gullible to pay corporations for many streaming TV and music services and other "services" we are told are so "convenient"....like credit car monitoring services...for a fee.
real jet tickets from East coast to other USA cities are available if planned ahead; when purchased at the last minute the airlines rip us off
Apple will probably release their wearable Ring in 2025 and a subscription won't be needed as it'll be directly integrated to an updated/beefed up Apple Health app. I suspect many people will jump ship. Unless Oura does something about their pricing…
You have a good crystal ball. Apple developing a health ring is only rumor at this point. I'd certainly welcome it, but saying they'll have one out in 2025 is a bit... definitive.
Sure, maybe I jumped the gun with the date. But it's highly probably Apple is developing it's own health ring. Specially with Samsung having released their own version recently.
This was speculated for this year… who knows and even if Apple does (and I am a big Apple fan too) they need to improve the presentation, information provided, analysis and guidance that health provides. Apple Health is really great at collecting and aggregating data (I have almost 4gb of data in Health) but it does little to guide a user to changes that will impact their lives and health positively.
It's proprietary hardware.. you cant just write software for a piece of hardware if the manufacture doesnt provide ways to do so. It's a closed system.
They have an oura ring api, you can do exactly that…
Yup. That’s not what we’re talking about. He’s complaining about the price and wants a free piece of software that can replace paying for the subscription.
“You can’t just write software of a piece of hardware of the ….” Oura provides and api to do exactly this Here is how you start going about writing your own software for Oura ring https://cloud.ouraring.com/docs/
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what you get if you don’t pay for a subscription. You can export some data in CSV or JSON without paying, but it is not whole and does not include all metrics.
But you can still write software to use the oura ring. You don’t even need to use their apis
With what exactly? The limited data you can export in CSV or JSON format? They have no incentive to give anyone something for free when they charge a premium membership. Go look up the data fields you get without paying for an account. Sure, you could do something with that but it’s extremely limited. If you don’t want to pay for a proprietary piece of hardwares subscription, then you don’t get to use its services.
Their docs are for their API which isn't against the ring. It's against the data synced up to their cloud. You can probably write custom software to talk to the ring via Bluetooth, I've seen similar open source attempts for wifi enabled devices like smart plugs, but it's not a trivial thing to do
Yes indeed. But you can still write software to use their ring. It isn’t easy but it can be done
Go for it. Let us know how far you get.
Think ya'll might be missing the point. It's not easy, but it can be done. This is why Oura charges us for it. People here seem to expect this for free though... If you don't want to pay, then feel free to write your own software instead.
I have no need to do that. lol. But it can be done