General

Calibre Bio Bankruptcy: What It Means — and Why Garmin Should Pay Attention

1 month ago (edited)

The bankruptcy of Calibre Bio is more than just a company going under — it has very real implications for users.

Their devices rely heavily on remote servers to store the spirometry data (portal.calibrebio.com). If those servers go offline, sessions won’t sync, historical data may become inaccessible (exports are processed on their servers), and the core functionality of the device could stop to work entirely.


If you’re a customer (like me), it’s worth acting quickly: export any data you can, save reports/screenshots, and keep an eye on whether parts of the system can run locally. Once backend infrastructure is discontinued, recovery will probably impossible.

Strategically, this situation highlights a bigger gap in the wearables market. Companies like Garmin still rely mostly on estimated VO₂max based on heart rate and activity patterns. These estimates can be useful, but they’re often off - especially outside steady-state conditions.


Calibre’s approach was fundamentally different and I really liked it for optimizing my health and training: innovative device, real spirometry data, measuring actual oxygen consumption and metabolic response instead of inferring it. That’s a completely different level of accuracy and opens the door to much better training and health guidance (e.g. real fat oxidation vs. carb usage).

This is why the current situation feels like a missed opportunity. If a company like Garmin stepped in, they wouldn’t just acquire a product—they’d gain access to real metabolic measurement and could significantly upgrade their entire performance stack.

Right now, though, the immediate reality is simpler: if the servers go dark, the ecosystem likely goes with them.

From a technical angle and as a happy Calibre Bio user: the device communicates via Bluetooth, it might be possible to reverse engineer the protocol and build a community-driven app. That would at least preserve basic functionality and access to raw spirometry data. Of course, this depends on how locked down the communication is, but it wouldn’t be the first time a stranded device gets a second life this way.

UPDATE 2026-05-09:
Built an alternative spiroergometry software called OpenSpiro that can be used with calibre bio devices and is free and local. Just download it here: https://openspiro.com/download

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· 1 month ago (edited)

UPDATE: Built an alternative Software called "OpenSpiro" to combine the sensor data from Calibre Bio, Garmin Vector Pedals (powermeter) and Polar H10 (heartrate). Always missed the direct powermeter integration and wanted to keep everything running even when the saas based calibre server wents down. Not sure if there are enough other calibre users who needs this. Just open an account here and write a comment.

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· 3 weeks ago

Looking to use as a coach as we do currently

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· 2 weeks ago (edited)

When do you think the pro version will be ready Martin?

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· 2 weeks ago (edited)

Hey @andreas-jaeger-canas , just open a new reply here for new topics. Makes no sense for me to setup a new forum only for some crazy openspiro users like you and me 🤣 - I'll put my free time in developing the app instead. Regarding the OpenSpiro bugs (time, wrong calibre bio calculation). Fix is live in 0.1.1-alpha.12. I also added an article and inline help about the calculation topics and how OpenSpiro works internally: https://openspiro.com/knowledge/vo2-calculations/ Looking forward to your feedback!

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· 4 days ago (edited)

Hi, brand new here, so please let me know if I should ask this somewhere else, or start a new thread: I was excited to try the Openspiro app, which I installed this morning. But on my last two attempts to use the Calibre device, after charging, etc, and then trying to connect, it eventually just turns off and will not power on. Any experience with this? Naturally, the device was delivered to me within a couple of weeks of their demise, so I don't have much experience with it.

Thanks!

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