Blog · July 5, 2026 · 7 min read

What app should you use with Dexcom Stelo?

You bought a Stelo because you wanted to know what food does to your body. The sensor is the easy part. The app you pair it with determines whether you end two weeks with answers or just a wiggly line. Here's the full 2026 landscape.

First, how Stelo shares data

Stelo is Dexcom's over-the-counter CGM: no prescription, adults 18+, up to 15 days of wear per sensor. It requires the free Stelo app to run, and that app is where your live reading lives.

For everything else, Stelo writes glucose readings to Apple Health, and that's the door every third-party app walks through. One important detail: Dexcom writes Stelo data to Apple Health on a delay of roughly 3 hours. Any app that claims to show you live Stelo data outside the Stelo app is overpromising. The good ones are designed around the delay instead. (We wrote a full explainer on why the delay exists and why it matters less than you think.)

Option 1: just the Stelo app

The Stelo app is genuinely decent: current reading, daily graph, basic event logging, and weekly summaries. If all you want is to glance at your number, it's enough.

Where it falls short is the question you bought the sensor to answer. You can log "ate food" as an event, but the app won't show you a per-meal response curve, won't compute your rise above baseline, and won't tell you which of the five things you ate today caused the 4pm crash. After two weeks you'll know your average. You won't know your triggers.

Option 2: spike (per-meal analysis on top of Stelo)

spike exists precisely to answer the trigger question. You keep the Stelo app running the sensor, grant spike read access to Apple Health, and then just log what you eat: snap a photo, speak it, or search. AI fills in the nutrition details.

Once Stelo's data lands in Apple Health, spike does the analysis automatically for each meal:

• The full curve: where your glucose started, how high it went, and when it came back down.
• The verdict: a notification telling you whether that burrito spiked you (+52 mg/dL) or you stayed steady.
• The day view: your whole day's curve with every meal marked, plus time in range and daily average.

Because spike analyzes complete responses rather than streaming live numbers, the Apple Health delay costs you almost nothing: a meal's glucose story takes 2 to 3 hours to unfold anyway. The verdict arrives when the story is complete.

spike is $129.99 a year (about $10.83/month, billed annually) or $19.99 a month, with a free trial. Worth putting in context: a Stelo subscription runs about $89 a month, so the analysis layer that turns those sensors into answers adds roughly 12 percent to what you're already spending.

Option 3: Levels

Levels supports Stelo as one of its sensor options and layers its metabolic score, zones, and content library on top. It's polished, but you're paying an ongoing membership for scoring and education rather than deeper per-meal measurement, and the total cost lands well above a standalone companion app. Worth it if you want the full Levels ecosystem; overkill if you want meal answers.

Option 4: January AI

January AI can ingest CGM data and also estimates glucose responses from food photos alone. The estimation tech is impressive, but if you're already wearing a Stelo you have real measurements, and real beats estimated every time. January makes the most sense before you buy a sensor, not after.

The comparison

spike is a wellness app, not a medical device. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Pricing and platform details for third-party products are approximate as of July 2026 and may change. Stelo and Dexcom are trademarks of Dexcom, Inc. spike is not affiliated with or endorsed by Dexcom.