Why Oura’s New Women’s Health Features Are Just the Beginning
The Oura ring was key in navigating my fertility, but I believe the most impactful insight and features are yet to come....
This blog will cover my thoughts on:
The Oura Ring
Why I continue to use Oura for women’s health
My experience pairing Oura with Natural Cycles
Cost of Oura <> Natural Cycles
Oura’s new women’s health features
Why I’m gassed (excited) about these updates:
Oura’s potential and what I’m excited to see in the future
The Oura ring
As someone deeply interested in health data and self-tracking, I’ve used the Oura ring for two years. While I appreciate the insights it offers, especially regarding my body temperature, the experience hasn’t always been revolutionary. For instance, my readiness, sleep, and activity scores are interesting but leave me asking, “What do I do with this?”
But here’s where I’m bullish on Oura: they’re making a strong effort to improve women’s health tracking. The latest feature releases—accurate cycle tracking, fertile window insights, and perimenopause insights—show their commitment to addressing unique women’s health needs. Below, I’ll share my journey with the Oura ring, especially when paired with the Natural Cycles app, and break down the pros, cons, and future possibilities of Oura’s women’s health features.
Why I continue to use Oura for women’s health
I’ve been a data nut for as long as I can remember. I love quantifying everything about my health, and the Oura ring has made tracking my body temperature more accessible than ever. But while the data itself is valuable, what’s missing for me is actionable insights—the ‘so what’ behind each score. Not everyone feels this way. For many, Oura has been their first introduction to understanding their health through data, which is exciting.
Which is why pairing the Oura ring with Natural Cycles was crucial. I’ve been using the Oura ring alongside Natural Cycles for the last 1.5 years, and that has been a game changer.
My experience pairing Oura with Natural Cycles
To get the most out of Oura’s data, I paired it with Natural Cycles. This combination was a game-changer because it translated my body temperature into specific, actionable insights, especially around fertility. Here’s how the Natural Cycles algorithm provides clear guidance:
If you’re trying to conceive: The algorithm pinpoints ovulation timing, suggesting the ideal time to try to conceive (actionable ✅).
If you’re trying to prevent pregnancy: It identifies high-risk days, so you know when to take precautions (actionable ✅).
My initial goal for using Oura <> Natural cycles was to establish healthy, “normal” cycles that would allow me to get pregnant in the future. This specifically looks like:
being able to track my cycles and see patterns and variations
checking for ovulation (raise in temperature) during my cycles
Any conversation revolving fertility will involve understanding if you are ovulating because that is necessary for you to conceive, so that’s what I was after.
Cost of Oura <> Natural Cycles
However, it’s worth noting that this comes at a price.
Oura + Natural Cycles for 2 YEARS would cost ~$830.
The Oura ring is ~$400 USD. However, Oura requires a subscription that’s $6 USD / month to access in-depth insights. Natural Cycles charges $15 USD / month for their app with actionable insights.
Note 1: The Oura app subscription is free for 1 year post purchase of the ring.
Note 2: Paying for the Oura app subscription is necessary for the integration with Natural Cycles. (I unsubscribed from the monthly Oura fees and my integration immediately broke).
Using both Oura and Natural Cycles costs around $830 over two years, which is steep, especially when simpler solutions like the TempDrop thermometer exist. (Though I think wearing the Oura ring is easier than wearing the TempDrop through the night, but this is princess-level user experience feedback.)
This raises the question: what am I actually getting for this price?
Oura’s new women’s health features
This is where I think Oura’s real potential lies—they’re in a unique position to turn the vast data from over a million users into genuinely actionable insights tailored to women’s needs.
I understand that Oura doesn’t brand themselves solely as a women’s health tool and offers other insights. However, I think they have an opportunity to connect general biometric data with women’s health data to deliver users actionable insights. And I’m excited about this.
Which brings me back to Oura’s latest announcements:
Improving accuracy in cycle tracking; 🔗Oura’s page
Fertile window insights; 🔗Oura’s page
Perimenopause insights; 🔗Oura’s page
Why I’m gassed (excited) about these updates:
“Oura’s period prediction is now twice as accurate for members with irregular cycles”—this is a big win. Since most hormonal and fertility insights depend on cycle tracking, irregular cycles can make everything more complicated. Predicting cycles more accurately means better insights into your body’s rhythms, and that’s huge.
Here’s a real-world example of why cycle accuracy matters: If you’re planning an egg or embryo freezing cycle, timing is key because the cycle generally begins around day 3 of your period. When I scheduled my embryo freezing around travel and product launches, knowing my start date with confidence was essential. (Note: cycles can also begin with induced periods from birth control, if needed.)
Next up: fertile windows! This is the kind of actionable insight that women can truly benefit from. I’m hoping Oura will go even further by providing more accurate ovulation windows, which would enable cycle tracking for birth control purposes—just like Natural Cycles does.
And perimenopause insights—woohoo! Okay, there’s not a lot to cheer about with menopause, but it’s exciting to see data-driven insights supporting women’s health across the full hormonal journey. While many companies focus solely on fertile years, I think these insights will help us understand and prepare for the later stages of hormonal health, like perimenopause.
Oura’s potential and what I’m excited to see in the future
"Oura is one of the few companies uniquely positioned to turn their data into actionable recommendations..
Right now, Oura helps me understand my body better, which is great. But with all this data, what can they tell me that I don’t already know?
For instance, tagging symptoms for perimenopause is useful, but imagine if the Oura ring could actually detect when someone might be entering the perimenopause phase—a stage that many women find hard to identify, let alone prepare for.
In the past decade, personalized hormonal and fertility insights have made big strides. Now, I’m eager to see how we can connect biometric data like sleep and stress with hormonal and fertility data. This is exactly the kind of insight Oura could bring with the data they’re collecting.
Looking forward to more updates from Oura’s women’s health team!