Testing and Stagin

Question

Hi Terra team,

Two questions about the Testing and Staging environments.

Do Testing and Staging connect to real provider accounts and return that user's actual data, including historical backfill? Or do they return synthetic or fixture data? I want to validate real Garmin payload shape and multi-year backfill depth before going to Production.
Does usage in Testing and Staging consume the 100,000 monthly credit allowance, or are those environments exempt? Specifically: if I request a multi-year Garmin backfill for one user in Testing, what does that consume?

Context: solo developer, endurance analytics product, migrating off direct Garmin integration. Backfill depth is load-bearing for us so I need to measure it rather than assume it.

Vanessa · Accepted Answer

Hi Mitch,

Testing and Staging are pre-production sandbox environments on Terra: they use the same OAuth flow as Production, so users authenticate with their real Garmin (or Oura, Fitbit, etc.) accounts and Terra returns that account's real data, including multi-year historical backfill. That means the Garmin payload shape and backfill depth you validate in Testing are representative of what you'll see in Production.

For synthetic data specifically, the dashboard has a separate Payload Simulator and also Synthetic users feature that emits generated payloads to your webhook, useful for shape checks without a wearable. That's opt-in and distinct from a live provider connection.

On Garmin backfill depth: the ceiling is 5 years into the past, subject to Garmin's own push behavior. Two things to plan for while you're validating:

The user has to grant the HISTORICAL_DATA_EXPORT scope on Garmin's OAuth screen. Garmin defaults it to OFF, so without it you'll only get data from the connection date forward. Prompt users to enable it in your connection flow.
Even with the scope granted, Garmin's initial historical push doesn't always include every activity. Some only surface on a later reconnection, and a few never come through. That's a Garmin-side limitation, not something Terra can force.

Historical data docs: https://docs.tryterra.co/health-and-fitness-api/managing-user-health-data/requesting-historical-data

On credits: the pricing model meters against active authentications and events, and Testing/Staging are intended as pre-production validation environments (they carry their own 50-connected-users cap per environment, independent of your Production plan). For a definitive read on how your specific plan meters Testing/Staging activity against the 100,000 credit allowance, I'd submit a ticket via "Support" on your Terra API dashboard so the team can confirm against your account. For testing purposes this usually does not fall into weight since you are limited by the 50 cap anyways!

Pricing reference: https://docs.tryterra.co/health-and-fitness-api/pricing Environments overview: https://docs.tryterra.co/health-and-fitness-api/integration-setup/understanding-terra-environments

Happy building.