Spire Stone vs Alveos One: What Happened to the Spire Breathing Wearable, and What Replaced It

Short answer: The Spire Stone is gone. Spire discontinued all of its consumer products in June 2019, ended support for the Stone on 15 June 2020, and spent the next five years selling clinical respiratory monitoring to COPD care teams before being acquired by Wellinks in September 2024. The idea behind the Stone, a wearable that measures your breathing and nudges you in real time when your pattern changes, did not die with it. Alveos One is the closest present-day successor: it senses the breath itself at the sternum, runs day and night, tells nasal from mouth breathing, and delivers the same kind of gentle haptic cue the Stone was loved for.

Somewhere in a drawer you may still have one: a smooth grey pebble on a wishbone clip, resting on a cork charging pad that was, for a while, the most elegant object on anyone’s nightstand. Say you bought it in 2016. You clipped it inside your waistband, and a few times a day your hip buzzed softly to tell you your breathing had gone short and choppy through a meeting you had not even registered as stressful. Then one day in 2020 the app stopped syncing, and the pebble became a pebble again. If you are searching for “Spire stone” or “Spire breathing” in 2026, you are probably asking one of two questions: what happened, and what do I use now. Both have good answers.

What was the Spire Stone?

The Stone came out of Stanford’s Calming Technology Lab, where researchers had spent years on the relationship between breathing patterns and autonomic state. Spire opened pre-sales in June 2014 at $109 (TechCrunch) and later sold the device at $149.

The mechanism was mechanical and rather clever. A force sensor sat pressed against your torso by the tension of a waistband or bra strap. Every inhale expands the torso by a few millimetres; the sensor read that expansion, breath by breath, and software sorted the rhythm into three labelled states: calm, focus, and tension. When the pattern its app labelled tension went on too long, the Stone buzzed (Forbes, Gadgets & Wearables).

That buzz was the product. Step counters told you at midnight what you had done all day. The Stone told you at 2:15 p.m. what you were doing right now, while there was still time to do something about it. A decade later, that is still the rarest feature in the wearable market.

What happened to Spire? Is the Spire Stone discontinued?

Yes. In June 2019 Spire discontinued all direct-to-consumer products, the Stone included, and support ended on 15 June 2020. The company did not fail; it moved. Spire took its respiration-sensing know-how and rebuilt it as the Health Tag, a sensor that adheres to clothing, survives the washing machine, runs up to 12 months without charging, and captures 2,000 to 4,000 breaths a day for remote monitoring of COPD patients (Wellinks). On 30 September 2024, Wellinks acquired Spire Health and folded that system into its cardiopulmonary care platform (GlobeNewswire).

There is a compliment buried in that pivot. The technology worked well enough that clinicians now use its descendant to monitor breathing in seriously ill patients. What ended was not the science. It was the consumer product, and everyone who owned one was left holding a very calm paperweight.

How does Alveos One compare with the Spire Stone?

Treat each as an instrument and the comparison gets simple. The Stone measured torso expansion through clothing pressure. That is a fine instrument with three known limitations. It needed a snug waistband to press the sensor home, so a loose dress or gym shorts could starve it of signal. It measured only while worn, and it was worn only while dressed, so the night went unrecorded. And because torso movement carries no information about the route the air took, it could never say whether you were breathing through your nose or your mouth.

Alveos One attaches with a magnet at the sternum and senses the breath itself: the acoustic and mechanical signature of air actually moving through the airway. That difference in signal is what unlocks the things the Stone could not do. It runs continuously, through the day and through the night, where breathing patterns during sleep are linked with how restorative that sleep is. It distinguishes nasal from mouth breathing. And it reports a respiratory rate that held 94.6% accuracy against reference equipment at rest in an independent University of Kent study, with the methodology on our science page.

The one thing the two devices share is the thing Stone owners miss most. Alveos One carries a haptic engine, and when your breathing slides into a pattern you have asked it to watch for, say a stretch of quick shallow breaths at your desk, it nudges you while it is happening. Real-time feedback of this kind helps you notice shifts earlier and step in sooner. The Stone’s buzz has a successor.

Comparison at a glance

What should former Spire Stone owners do now?

Your instinct in buying one was sound, and the decade since has been kind to it: breathing has moved from a niche obsession to something Oura and Whoop both estimate overnight from heart-rate data. If an overnight trend line is all you want, that comparison covers what rings and bands can and cannot see. But if what you actually miss is a device that measures the breath directly and taps you on the sternum instead of the wrist, that is the specific gap Alveos One was built to fill, and the full 2026 wearables rundown shows how thin the field still is. In the meantime, the habit costs nothing: our free calibrated box-breathing tool takes about a minute to tune to your lungs, no clip required.

FAQ

Is the Spire Stone still supported?

No. Spire ended support on 15 June 2020 after discontinuing all consumer products in June 2019. The companion app is no longer maintained.

Can I still buy a Spire Stone?

Old stock surfaces on marketplaces, but with the app unsupported the device cannot deliver the experience it was built for. Buying one in 2026 gets you the pebble without the product.

What is the closest replacement for the Spire Stone?

Alveos One is the nearest successor in spirit and the more capable instrument in practice: direct breath sensing rather than torso expansion, day and night coverage, nasal versus mouth detection, and a haptic nudge in the Stone’s tradition. Rings and bands like Oura and Whoop estimate an overnight respiratory rate from heart-rate data but offer no daytime measurement and no real-time cue.

Does Alveos One buzz like the Spire Stone did?

Yes, by design. A haptic engine delivers a gentle nudge when your breathing shifts into a pattern you have asked it to watch, so the feedback arrives while the pattern is happening rather than in an end-of-day summary.

Is Spire Health the same company as Spire Global?

No. Spire Global is a satellite data company. Spire Health made the Stone, pivoted to clinical respiratory monitoring, and was acquired by Wellinks in September 2024.

If your breathing at night involves loud snoring, gasping, or pauses, that belongs in front of a doctor rather than a comparison article. Alveos One is a wellness device for tracking your breathing patterns. It does not diagnose or treat any medical condition.

Sources

• TechCrunch, “Meet Spire, The Wearable Breath Tracker That Calms You Down” (June 2014 presale): techcrunch.com

• Forbes, “Does The Spire Stress Tracker Actually Work?” (2015, mechanism and price): forbes.com

• Gadgets & Wearables, “Spire review” (2016, wear position and breathing states): gadgetsandwearables.com

• Wellinks, “Spire RPM System” (Health Tag specifications): wellinks.com/spire

• GlobeNewswire, “Wellinks Acquires Spire Health” (30 September 2024): globenewswire.com

• Alveos science page (University of Kent validation study): alveoslabs.com/science