What is Home Assistant? A beginner's guide (2026)

If you own smart devices from more than one brand, you probably have more than one app: one for the lights, one for the robot vacuum, one for the thermostat, and a voice assistant that only understands half of them. Home Assistant is the popular open-source answer to that mess. It pulls everything into one dashboard, lets devices from different brands trigger each other, and does most of it without the cloud.

This guide explains what Home Assistant is, what it's good at, what you need to run it, and how to get started without spending a weekend fixing it.

What Home Assistant is

Home Assistant is free, open-source home automation software. It started as a hobby project by Paulus Schoutsen in 2013 and is now one of the largest open-source projects on GitHub, stewarded by the non-profit Open Home Foundation. Development is funded largely through Nabu Casa, the company behind the optional Home Assistant Cloud subscription.

Instead of living on a company's server, Home Assistant runs on a small computer in your home: a dedicated box, a Raspberry Pi or an old mini PC. It talks to your devices over your home network (and over radio protocols such as Zigbee, Z‑Wave or Thread, if you add a radio), so it can:

• Show everything in one place: lights, plugs, sensors, cameras, speakers, climate, energy use.
• Run automations across brands, for example "when the last person leaves, turn off the lights, set the heating to eco and start the robot vacuum".
• Keep working offline. Local devices and automations don't depend on the internet. We cover why that matters in our guide to a smart home without internet.
• Track energy from smart plugs, meters and solar inverters.
• Talk to your other ecosystems: it can control devices that are also in Apple Home, Google Home or Alexa, and act as a Matter controller.

It connects to thousands of products through integrations, which are mostly maintained by the community. Some talk to devices directly on your network; others go through a manufacturer's cloud, so check before you buy.

What you need

All three run Home Assistant OS, the recommended way to install it. You'll also want a wired Ethernet connection to your router; Home Assistant's own instructions assume it.

Optional extras:

• A Zigbee, Thread or Z‑Wave radio (a small USB dongle) if you want to use cheap battery sensors, buttons and bulbs that don't use Wi‑Fi. Our explainer on Matter and Thread shows where Thread fits.
• A phone with the free Home Assistant companion app for iOS or Android. It adds notifications and lets your phone act as a presence sensor.

HA OS or Container?

Home Assistant officially supports two installation types:

• Home Assistant OS: a small dedicated operating system that includes everything. It supports apps (older guides call them add-ons), such as a Zigbee or MQTT server, one-click updates and backups. This is what Home Assistant recommends for most people.
• Home Assistant Container: you run it in Docker on a Linux system you manage yourself. It has the same automations, dashboards and integrations, but no apps, and you handle updates manually. Some features that rely on apps, such as Thread and Z‑Wave, have no out-of-the-box support here.

If you don't already run a home server, pick HA OS. If you do, you can still run HA OS as a virtual machine on it (for example in Proxmox).

Getting started in six steps

1. Install it. Plug in a Green, or flash HA OS onto your Pi or PC using the official instructions. Home Assistant is also testing a new installer with a live USB mode for mini PCs, but it is still an alpha.
2. Open the onboarding page. On a computer on the same network, go to http://homeassistant.local:8123 and create the owner account. Use a strong, unique password.
3. Accept discovered devices. Home Assistant finds many devices on your network automatically. Add them one area at a time (kitchen, living room) so the setup stays tidy.
4. Turn on backups and copy them off the device, to a NAS or cloud storage. This is the single most important step.
5. Build one simple automation, such as lights on at sunset. Then add more slowly. Blueprints let you import tested automations shared by others.
6. Decide on remote access. Home Assistant Cloud (a paid Nabu Casa subscription that also funds development) is the easiest route. Alternatives include a VPN. Avoid simply opening a port on your router.

Is Home Assistant right for you?

If you only have a few bulbs from one brand, that brand's app may be enough. Home Assistant shines once you have a mix: a smart thermostat, a robot vacuum (see our robot vacuum setup guide), cameras and sensors that otherwise never talk to each other.