Polar Flow is free, so stopping costs you nothing on Polar’s side: “Currently, the information is stored in the Polar Flow service until you decide to delete your account” (Polar Privacy Notice), and Polar states no deletion period for accounts that go unused. Its account-wide download, though, “does not include any data that is derived from the data provided by you using Polar algorithms”, such as sleep and activity. Save your sessions and RR intervals RR interval The time from one heartbeat to the next, measured in milliseconds between the R peaks of an ECG. HRV is calculated from a series of these intervals. More about RR interval from the Flow website, and ask Polar for the rest.
Polar’s pages checked: 24 October 2026. This page is general information, not legal advice.
Polar Flow is free
“Yes. Polar Flow remains free. Even though there now is a Fitness Program subscription, it is not required to fully enjoy Polar products or the Flow service.” The Fitness Program costs 9.99 € a month or a local equivalent, and if the subscription expires, the programme “is ended at the same time” (Polar Support, Fitness Program). Polar’s terms add that with any premium service, “your ability to use the service ends when your paid subscription ends.”
How long Polar keeps your data
Polar’s Data Notice says: “By default, your data is retained as long as your Flow account remains active”, on servers in Ireland and Sweden. Neither it nor the Privacy Notice defines when an account stops being active or sets a period of disuse. Apart from a breach of its terms, which can lead Polar to remove “your account and data” (Polar, Terms of Use), Polar describes two cases in which it deletes accounts:
- A withdrawn consent. If you withdraw a mandatory consent, the account is locked for 180 days and then goes into a removal cycle in which it is permanently deleted after 30 days (Polar Privacy Notice).
- An unverified e-mail. Accounts created before 20 August 2024 whose e-mail address was never verified are locked and then deleted after seven months (Polar, Privacy FAQ).
Deleting the account yourself takes a month, with a reminder two weeks in (Polar, Privacy FAQ), and “The deleted data is not retrievable” (Polar Privacy Notice). Polar has closed a service before: “The polarpersonaltrainer.com service was ramped down on 31 Dec 2019,” and “If you didn’t transfer your data in time, unfortunately it is now deleted and cannot be restored” (Polar, Privacy FAQ).
Export before you stop
Polar’s exports cover different things, so use more than one:
- The account download. At account.polar.com, select Download your data. Polar e-mails you when it is ready, and you then have two weeks to download it. It holds the data you provided and “most of the data coming from the Polar devices or Polar apps you use”, but not the activity and sleep information Polar derives (Polar Support, download). Polar adds that it “is not a mass loader for exercises”, even though all your exercises are in it (Polar, Privacy FAQ).
- Training sessions. On the Flow website, open a session from the Diary and use Export for TCX, CSV, FIT or GPX files, or a ZIP of them (Polar Support, session export).
- RR intervals. “Training sessions recorded with an ECG ECG A recording of the heart's electrical activity, taken with electrodes on the skin. ECG-based RR intervals are the reference standard for measuring HRV. More about ECG heart rate sensor include downloadable RR interval data”, which you export as CSV from the session’s Training analysis page. There is no RR file for sessions recorded in the Polar Flow or Beat app, for H10 memory recordings processed in Polar Beat, or with an optical sensor (Polar Support, RR export).
The AccessLink API is no archive: it returns only exercises “uploaded to Flow in the last 30 days”, and only those uploaded after you connected the app (Polar AccessLink). How to export your HRV data covers the files in more detail.
Ask for a copy
- Where: privacy@polar.com, the address of Polar’s Data Protection Officer at Polar Electro Oy in Finland. Polar’s Customer Care “can assist you and deliver a copy of the personal information we have of you” (Polar Privacy Notice).
- What to ask for: the derived data the download leaves out: Nightly Recharge, sleep stages and scores, daily activity and continuous heart rate, with the dates and a format such as CSV or JSON. Polar’s Privacy Notice says that “The right to data portability only applies to the data provided by you, not the derived data”. That is the portability right of GDPR Article 20. The right of access in Article 15 is wider: the European Data Protection Board says it covers the “results of a health assessment” as well as raw data from connected devices (EDPB, Guidelines 01/2022). So base the request on Article 15. Wearable data rights explains the difference and where the argument stops.
- When: Polar states no deadline. Under the GDPR the answer is due within one month, extendable by two more where necessary because of the complexity or number of requests (GDPR Article 12). Under the GDPR the first copy is free (Article 15(3)); a company may refuse even a first request only exceptionally, if it proves the request was made with an abusive intention (Court of Justice, C-526/24).
The data request letter builder has Polar’s address and puts these points into a letter. Wearable data rights covers reminders and complaints, and Polar HRV explains Nightly Recharge and the Orthostatic test Orthostatic test A short morning test: lie or sit still for 2 minutes, then stand for 2 minutes, recording heart rate and HRV in both positions to see how your body handles standing up. More about Orthostatic test .