Homey
Last updated: January 3, 2026
Homey is the smart home hub for people who want Home Assistant's power without the learning curve. With built-in radios for Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, Matter, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, infrared, and 433 MHz RF - all in one box - it's the "no dongles required" approach to home automation.
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Homey's pitch is seductive: what if you could have a genuinely powerful smart home without spending weekends on YAML files? The hardware backs this up - the Homey Pro (now LG-owned via Athom) packs every major protocol into a single orb. Zigbee sensors, Z-Wave locks, infrared remotes, even those cheap 433 MHz outlets from a decade ago - they all just connect. The 2026 model doubled the RAM to 4GB, supports 50,000+ devices from 1,000+ brands, and includes a Thread Border Router for Matter devices.
The automation system uses visual "Flows" - drag-and-drop cards for triggers, conditions, and actions. It's genuinely intuitive: non-technical household members can actually understand and modify automations. Need more power? Advanced Flows add logic, variables, and complex branching without touching code. The Matter Bridge app (November 2025) can even expose your legacy Zigbee/Z-Wave devices to Apple Home or Google Home - suddenly that old thermostat works with Siri.
The trade-off: Homey costs real money upfront. Home Assistant is free and infinitely more customizable. If you want to tweak everything, write custom integrations, or run bleeding-edge features, Home Assistant wins. But if you want a polished experience that your whole household can use - and you'd rather spend time living in your smart home than building it - Homey earns its premium.
Related Terms
Home Assistant
Home Assistant is the fast-moving heart of the open-source smart home movement. With 2 million active installations and 21,000+ contributors, it's become the de facto standard for local-first home automation - the platform that made "your data stays home" a mainstream expectation.
Matter
Matter is the smart home industry's attempt to finally get everyone to play nice together. It's an open connectivity standard that lets devices from different brands (Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, you name it) actually work with each other without the usual compatibility headaches.
Thread
Thread is a low-power mesh networking protocol that lets smart home devices talk to each other without a central hub. Think of it as the invisible web that Matter devices use to communicate - each device strengthens the network, and if one goes down, the others pick up the slack.
Z-Wave
Z-Wave is the "it just works" mesh protocol for smart homes. Every device is certified for compatibility before it hits the market, and the sub-GHz radio cuts through walls that would stop Zigbee dead. You'll pay more, but you'll troubleshoot less.
Zigbee
Zigbee is the veteran mesh networking protocol that's been quietly running smart homes for over a decade. It connects low-power devices like sensors, bulbs, and switches through a self-healing mesh network - and unlike Wi-Fi gadgets, your Zigbee motion sensor won't need new batteries every month.