Home Assistant

Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform that pulls your smart home devices, lights, locks, thermostats, sensors, cameras, into one local dashboard instead of scattering them across separate apps and clouds. It talks to over a thousand integrations directly on your network wherever a device supports it, falling back to the internet only when there’s no local option. Install it once, and one place sees and automates your whole smart home.

Where Home Assistant actually came from

Home Assistant started on September 17, 2013, as a personal project by Dutch engineer Paulus Schoutsen, who bought a Philips Hue starter kit, found its hub had a local API, and wrote a Python script to control the bulbs instead of using the app. Schoutsen founded Nabu Casa in 2018 to fund development through an optional Home Assistant Cloud subscription. In 2024, governance moved to the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit that now owns the project and, by charter, can’t be sold.

Two supported install paths, not four

Home Assistant officially supports two installation types today. Older write-ups describing four, Core, Supervised, Container, and Operating System, describe a lineup that no longer exists: the project deprecated Core and Supervised on May 22, 2025, and support ended at release 2025.12. Both still technically run for existing installs, but they’re gone from the docs and no longer supported.

• Home Assistant Operating System (HAOS): an appliance-style OS including the Supervisor and Apps store (what most guides still call add-ons), flashed onto a Raspberry Pi, ODROID, or x86-64 box, or run as a VM. The recommended default for most people, and what ships pre-installed on Home Assistant Green.
• Home Assistant Container: a Docker image you run yourself, alongside a container runtime you manage. No Apps store, no one-click updates, and integrations like Thread and Z-Wave that normally arrive as apps need separate handling. Fits best if everything else already lives in Docker Compose.

Home Assistant Green is the plug-and-play option, HAOS pre-flashed, just add power and Ethernet. Home Assistant Yellow is the DIY hub: bring your own Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, add a heatsink, and flash it yourself for a more extensible base station.

services:
  homeassistant:
    container_name: homeassistant
    image: "ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable"
    volumes:
      - /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro
    restart: unless-stopped
    privileged: true
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      TZ: Europe/Amsterdam

docker compose up -d

Swap in your own config path and time zone, then bring up the stack. Home Assistant answers on port 8123 once it’s running, either path continuing into the same onboarding wizard.

Automations, integrations, and Assist

The dashboard is only the visible part. Home Assistant’s automation engine does the real work: a light at sunset, an alert if the garage door’s been open too long, scenes spanning brands that don’t otherwise talk to each other. It scales from simple UI wizards up to YAML templating for logic the wizards can’t express. Integrations aren’t limited to hardware either: the official Mealie integration pulls a household’s meal plan straight onto the dashboard calendar. Assist, the built-in voice control, follows the same local-first principle: it can run entirely on your own hardware, with optional LLM integration for more conversational requests. We cover that pairing in our Self-Hosted LLM Guide, and Assist gets a mention in our Best Self-Hosted AI Tools roundup.

That gap between plugging in a Home Assistant Green and actually running a smart home is why we rate Home Assistant Medium, not Easy. Getting it online is genuinely beginner-friendly, arguably a shorter first hour than Nextcloud’s Docker Compose file or Immich’s four-container stack. What pushes it past Easy is everything after onboarding: pairing a Zigbee or Z-Wave radio, automations beyond the built-in wizards, and deciding how you’ll reach your dashboard remotely. None of that is optional if it’s going to replace more than one smart plug’s app, and the YAML learning curve is real, even if the installer isn’t the hard part.

Home Assistant: pros and cons

• Runs locally by default, with 1,000+ integrations and no cloud account required for core functionality
• Free and open source under the permissive Apache-2.0 license, governed by a non-profit that can’t be sold
• Assist voice control runs fully offline if you want, with optional LLM integration for natural-language commands
• Hardware options at every skill level, from the plug-and-play Green to a bring-your-own Raspberry Pi

• Only two installation methods are officially supported now; plenty of older tutorials still describe deprecated ones
• Real automations need a Zigbee or Z-Wave radio, YAML familiarity, or both to go beyond the basics
• Container installs skip the Apps store, so some integrations need extra manual setup
• Remote access is a decision you have to make yourself, it isn’t safe out of the box

Home Assistant vs. the alternatives

Against Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or Samsung SmartThings, it’s the familiar self-hosting trade: more setup for devices that keep working when your internet doesn’t, and data that stays on your network by default. Apple HomeKit is different, less a rival than a possible destination: Home Assistant can expose its devices to Apple’s Home app, acting as the brain behind a HomeKit interface on your iPhone.

	Home Assistant	Google Home / Alexa	Apple HomeKit
Local/offline control	Yes	No, cloud-dependent	Partial, needs a Home Hub
Device support	1,000+ integrations	Brand-dependent	HomeKit-certified devices only
Data stays on your network	Yes, by default	No	Partial
Cost	Free, your own hardware	Free app, hardware varies	Free app, Apple hardware needed

FAQ

Is Home Assistant actually free?

Yes. The core platform is free and open source under Apache-2.0, no feature paywall. Home Assistant Cloud, the optional Nabu Casa subscription for remote access and cloud voice, mainly funds development and skips a DIY reverse-proxy setup.

Do I need a Raspberry Pi to run Home Assistant?

No. A Raspberry Pi is the most common starting point, but Home Assistant OS also runs on ODROID boards, x86-64 mini PCs, and VMs, and Container runs anywhere Docker does, including a NAS. Home Assistant Green skips the hardware question entirely.

What happened to Home Assistant Core and Supervised?

Both were officially deprecated on May 22, 2025, losing support entirely at release 2025.12. They still technically run for existing installs, but the project no longer documents them or accepts issue reports, steering everyone toward Home Assistant OS or Container instead.

Is Home Assistant better than Google Home or Apple HomeKit?

Depends what you’re optimizing for. Google Home and HomeKit are simpler to start and lean more on the cloud. Home Assistant trades a steeper setup for local control, broader device support, and no dependency on one company’s servers staying online.