Proprietary Smart-Home Hubs → Home Assistant
What it saves, what actually moves, what you rebuild — and the thing that catches people.
What it costs, and what it saves
Vendor side, as listed on 2026-10-03: the SmartThings app stays free for device control. Samsung's official announcement of 23 June 2026, however, moves SmartThings API access to a $4.99-a-month Personal Plan for individual developers from October 2026, and that API is what Home Assistant's SmartThings integration uses. A Hubitat Elevation C-8 Pro (US) is a one-time 184.95 USD. Home Assistant itself is free software under Apache-2.0. Its hardware, as listed on home-assistant.io: Home Assistant Green $199 / 179€, Connect ZBT-2 (Zigbee or Thread) $49 / 45€, and Connect ZWA-2 (Z-Wave, including Long Range) $69 / 59€. All three come to $317 at US list prices before tax (our sum). The optional Home Assistant Link subscription is $6.50 a month or $65 a year; it covers remote access, offsite backups and Alexa/Google voice control.
Moves cleanly
Matter devices move without a reset. Matter allows several controllers at once, so a device already added to another Matter controller can be shared to Home Assistant from the Companion app; Thread devices also need a Thread border router. Devices that connect over Wi-Fi or through their own brand bridge are added through Home Assistant's integration for that brand without touching the device. Device names, rooms and your routine list copy over by hand.
You rebuild
Every Zigbee device must be factory-reset and paired again: Home Assistant's ZHA documentation requires this for devices previously joined to another Zigbee implementation. Every Z-Wave device must be excluded from the old network and included in the new one. SmartThings Routines and Hubitat rules are rebuilt as Home Assistant automations, scripts and scenes. The SmartThings integration can trigger SmartThings scenes but documents no import of Routines.
What Proprietary Smart-Home Hubs costs you today
Hardware plus creeping subscriptions (cloud features, video history) and cloud-dependent automations
What actually holds you in
Proprietary cloud, closed device ecosystems, and app dependencies you don't control.
What you are moving to
Home Assistant is the open-source home-automation platform that runs entirely on your own device — a Raspberry Pi, a mini-PC, or the purpose-built Home Assistant Green/Yellow. It integrates thousands of devices locally, so your home keeps working with the internet down and nothing phones home unless you allow it.
Free / open-source (runs on your own hardware)
Home Assistant strengths
- Local control — works offline
- Integrates thousands of devices and brands
- Huge, active community
What you give up
- Initial setup takes some tinkering
- You maintain your own hardware
The migration, step by step
- 1Inventory the hub: list every device with its protocol (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, Wi-Fi/cloud), room and name, and write down each routine's trigger, conditions and actions. Flag battery sensors and devices in hard-to-reach places, because they take longest to reset and re-pair.
- 2Set up Home Assistant on a Green or another host, with a Connect ZBT-2 for Zigbee and a ZWA-2 for Z-Wave placed away from the old hub. Pair mains-powered devices such as plugs and switches first, so the new mesh has repeaters before battery sensors join.
- 3Parallel run: move one room at a time so the two systems never control the same device. Optionally link the old hub with Home Assistant's SmartThings integration during the move, but that cloud integration now depends on Samsung's paid API plan.
- 4Move each device. For Z-Wave, exclude it from the old network (Home Assistant's docs note that any adapter can exclude), then include it in Home Assistant with S2 security where supported. For Zigbee, factory-reset the device and pair it to ZHA. Rename entities to match your inventory as you go.
- 5Rebuild automations in Home Assistant's editor from your written routine list. Start with locks, leak sensors, alarms and anything else safety-related, and test each one with the device in hand rather than trusting the editor.
- 6Cut over once the old hub controls nothing: remove its integration, power it down and keep it for a few weeks before factory-resetting or selling it. Note that Hubitat cloud-backup migration only restores to another Hubitat hub, so it cannot carry anything into Home Assistant.
The gotcha
Nothing in a vendor hub's radio can be carried to Home Assistant. Home Assistant's own migration tools work only between adapters it already manages: Zigbee moves between Silicon Labs, Texas Instruments and ConBee radios, and Z-Wave moves from one Home Assistant adapter to another. Hubitat's cloud backups include Zigbee and Z-Wave data, but they migrate only to another Hubitat hub (C-7 and newer to C-8 or C-8 Pro). So every Zigbee device needs a factory reset and every Z-Wave device needs an exclusion, and a Z-Wave device that was not excluded cannot join the new network. Second, the Connect ZBT-2 runs Zigbee or Thread, not both at once, so a home with Thread-based Matter devices needs a second adapter or another border router. Third, from October 2026 Samsung charges for SmartThings API access, so bridging the old hub into Home Assistant during a slow migration may cost $4.99 a month.
When to stay on Proprietary Smart-Home Hubs
Stay on SmartThings or Hubitat if the hub works and you do not want to own updates, backups and troubleshooting. The same holds if household members depend on the vendor app's simple routines, or if many battery Zigbee and Z-Wave devices sit behind walls and ceilings and would each need a physical reset. Hubitat in particular already runs automations locally on one appliance with vendor support, and Hub Protect extends its warranty for the length of the subscription.
More Layer 5 migrations
Figures verified 2026-07-04 against vendor pricing pages. Prices change and migrations differ by estate — treat the cost delta as a starting model, not a quote. Rankings and recommendations here are merit-only; affiliate income never changes a verdict. See our methodology.