SmartThings Announces Paid Outside Access from October 2026: What Home Assistant Users Can Do

If Home Assistant is how you control devices paired to a SmartThings hub, Samsung has announced that free outside access will be phased out starting in October 2026. Samsung said on 23 June 2026 that it will start charging outside software for access to SmartThings, with a personal plan for individual, non-commercial users. Home Assistant’s own SmartThings documentation now carries the same warning. For ordinary use in the SmartThings app with certified devices, Samsung says the change “does not affect the millions of SmartThings users who use the SmartThings App”.

Who this reaches

The change is about other software talking to SmartThings. In most homes that means Home Assistant’s official SmartThings integration, which pulls devices paired to a SmartThings hub into Home Assistant. It runs through Samsung’s servers rather than over your own network and it needs a Samsung account, so it depends on exactly the access Samsung is putting a price on. Custom scripts and automations that talk to SmartThings directly sit in the same position.

The direction of the connection matters. Home Assistant can read SmartThings devices, but no official route sends Home Assistant’s own devices into the SmartThings app, as our Home Assistant Green profile records. So the households exposed are the ones where the SmartThings hub holds the radios and Home Assistant does the automating.

What Samsung has said, and when

Samsung’s post sets out three things. Free access “will remain available through Q3”, which was the announced free-access window. A personal plan at $4.99 a month is aimed at “non-commercial, individual developers”, with separate paid tiers for companies. And October is a target, not a fixed switch-over. Samsung is “targeting availability for the new commercial tiers and personal plan offering in October 2026”. It also says it “will not begin applying the new usage limits or phasing out free access until October 2026”.

We re-read the post on 22 August 2026 and every one of those lines was still there. Home Assistant’s documentation says the same thing from its side: Samsung has announced that free access for outside software will be phased out starting in October 2026.

Two ways to keep your setup working

Pay for the personal plan. If your devices are staying where they are, the $4.99-a-month personal plan is the route both Home Assistant’s warning and our records point to for keeping the current setup running. It is the announced paid option for keeping that route. Check plan availability, sign-up requirements and your integration’s instructions before relying on it; our record does not confirm that a subscription requires no setup changes.

Move the devices off the SmartThings hub. The other route removes Samsung’s servers from the picture: take your Zigbee and Z-Wave devices off the SmartThings hub and pair them with a hub that Home Assistant runs directly. Moving means setting each device up again on its new hub, so the size of the job is the number of devices you own rather than the price of the hardware.

What a move to Home Assistant’s own hardware involves

If the new hub is Home Assistant Green, budget for radios separately, because the Green has none built in. Zigbee or Thread devices connect through a Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 adapter at $49, and one ZBT-2 handles Zigbee or Thread but never both at once. Home Assistant says the adapter “cannot do both Zigbee and Thread simultaneously” and that they “strongly recommend dedicating a device to each protocol”. If the Green itself will provide both radios, it needs two adapters. An existing supported Thread border router may provide the Thread connection instead; Home Assistant’s Green page still marks Thread on the adapter as under development. Z-Wave devices need a separate stick on top of that, which our records don’t price.

If you were about to buy a SmartThings hub

Check the timing first. Aeotec’s SmartThings hub is no longer sold by Aeotec as of 10 September 2026: it has gone from Aeotec’s own store, so check whether a seller offers remaining stock or a used unit. It still combines Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread and Matter in one box. Samsung describes no way for the hub to pass its Zigbee and Z-Wave devices out to other Matter platforms, though, and its Home Assistant route is affected by the announced outside-access fee.

What we couldn’t confirm

The exact switch-over date remains unconfirmed in our records. Samsung announced October 2026 as the start of phasing out free outside access, not a fixed day when every connection stops. Its statement exempts ordinary SmartThings app use with certified devices. Check Samsung’s current notice and Home Assistant’s integration instructions before deciding whether to subscribe or move devices; the records here do not establish that the transition has already happened.

For how the Green’s other connections work, including what its Alexa and Google Home routes cost, see our Home Assistant Green guide. The hub directory compares every hub we cover.