Product Library / Water Protection & Plumbing
Research profile · last verified 2026-07-19Aqara Water Leak Sensor
Compatibility
| Ecosystem | Support | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Home | WorksWorks with this ecosystem | The most thoroughly documented and longest-supported path for this device — it is stated on the printed manual, not just a web page, and Apple Home surfaces leak sensors well. Requires iOS 10.3 or later and, as with every path here, an Aqara hub. No hub, no HomeKit. |
| Amazon Alexa | WorksWorks with this ecosystem | Works via account-linking the Aqara Home skill, and Alexa carries Aqara's own compatibility badge on the product page. Two limits: the sensor must be joined to an Aqara hub first, and because the link is cloud-to-cloud, an Alexa routine triggered by a leak depends on the internet being up. |
| Google Home | PartialPartial support — see the catch | Aqara contradicts itself on its own product page. The prose description says the sensor is 'Compatible with the Aqara Hub, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa', but the structured 'Compatible with' badges immediately alongside list only Aqara, Apple Home, Alexa and IFTTT — Google is absent. Aqara's separate platform-overview page does list Google Home with 'Hub required'. Recorded as partial rather than full precisely because the vendor will not commit on the page selling the product. Separately, Google Home has historically been weak at surfacing sensor state, so 'works' may mean it can trigger a routine rather than that you can ask about it. |
| SmartThings | PartialPartial support — see the catch | Reachable only through a Matter-bridging Aqara hub — M2 on post-2023 firmware, M3, M100 or G5 Pro — which republishes the Zigbee sensor as a Matter Water Leak Detector. It is not a native path, SmartThings is absent from this product's compatibility badges on Aqara's US store, and pairing the sensor directly to a SmartThings hub is not officially supported. Aqara's own M3 page carries the caveat that 'Features may vary depending on the Matter app'. |
| Home Assistant | PartialPartial support — see the catch | Two routes, and the first is the one case where the mandatory-Aqara-hub rule breaks. Zigbee2MQTT documents SJCGQ11LM as a supported device against any generic Zigbee coordinator, exposing water leak, battery percentage, voltage, device temperature, power-outage count and trigger count — no Aqara hardware at all. That is a community integration Aqara does not endorse. The second route is the Matter bridge via an M3, M100 or M2, which needs the more expensive hub tier. Rated partial rather than full because neither route is vendor-supported for this specific model, and no first-party Aqara document confirms this SKU in Home Assistant. |
Protocols: ZIGBEE
Needs before it works: An Aqara hub is mandatory, and Aqara states it plainly in three places including the printed quick start guide: 'Aqara Hub is required to enable Aqara Water Leak Sensor to work with HomeKit technology.' Hubs reported compatible include the M2, M1S, M1S Gen 2, E1, G2H, G2H Pro, Camera Hub G3, M3 and M100 — indicative rather than authoritative, since no first-party hub-by-hub compatibility matrix could be located and Aqara's own support page for this product renders 'No content yet'. Critically, the hub you choose determines which ecosystems you get: only a Matter-bridging hub (M2 on post-2023 firmware, M3, M100, G5 Pro) can republish this sensor into SmartThings, Google Home or Home Assistant. A Home Assistant user running their own Zigbee coordinator can skip the Aqara hub entirely, but that is a community path Aqara does not endorse.
Subscription reality
✓ Works without a subscription: Yes.
No subscription, and leak alerts are not gated. Aqara's paid cloud tiers cover camera and doorbell video storage only and have no bearing on sensors. Recorded with the honesty caveat that this rests partly on absence: no Aqara statement creating a sensor subscription was found across every page researched, but neither was an explicit pledge that sensors stay free.
Maintenance reality
- Batteries: CR2032 coin cell, included and user-replaceable via a coin-turn back cover — expect roughly 24 months per set
- Cloud dependence: No — core function survives without the vendor's cloud
- The sensor has NO built-in buzzer — verified three ways in Aqara's own materials, and the single most consequential fact about it. The manual describes only 'an instant alert notification via app', the range-test procedure listens for the HUB making voice prompts, and the product page says the sensor 'will trigger the Hub to sound an alarm'. The audible alarm is wherever the hub is, not where the water is. The sensor-to-hub link is local Zigbee, so hub automations and the hub siren should survive an internet outage while push notifications will not — but note that Aqara's local-automation statement comes from the Hub M3 page, and no equivalent statement was found for older hubs (M1S, E1, G2H), so it should not be generalised across the hub line. Rated IP67 with a 0.5 mm trigger threshold on Aqara's global product page, though the US spec sheet says only 'Waterproof' and omits the IP rating — the vendor's own documents disagree. Community-sourced field caveats: Aqara Zigbee sensors are widely reported to re-route poorly through third-party Zigbee meshes after a dropout, and battery level can take up to 24 hours to first report under Zigbee2MQTT.
The catch
You are buying a $19 sensor that cannot do anything by itself, and the part that actually makes noise is sold separately. The sensor is silent — it has no buzzer, so it tells the hub and the hub beeps, meaning a leak under a basement utility sink alarms in your living room. An Aqara hub is mandatory, and which hub you pick quietly decides your ecosystem: the same $18.99 sensor is Apple-Home-only on an older E1 and reaches SmartThings, Google Home and Home Assistant on an M3, which costs $159.99, roughly eight times the sensor. And it is a Zigbee device, not a Matter one — any marketing that puts it near Matter is describing the hub's bridging, not the sensor, which will never join a Matter network on its own.
Who it's for
Households already inside the Aqara ecosystem with a hub deployed, where this is among the cheapest ways to add leak coverage and the marginal cost of the fourth and fifth sensor is trivial. Apple Home households get the most thoroughly documented and longest-supported path. Home Assistant users running their own Zigbee coordinator can ignore the hub requirement entirely and get a cheap, well-supported Zigbee endpoint. It is the wrong buy for someone purchasing a single leak sensor with no hub — the all-in cost is wrong and the alarm will not be where the water is — for anyone who needs an audible alarm at the leak site, for anyone shopping specifically for Matter-native hardware, and for SmartThings-first households, where the path exists but runs through a $160 detour.
Sources & method
Aqara Water Leak Sensor quick start guide (official manual PDF, cdn.aqara.com) — model SJCGQ11LM, 50×50×15 mm, Zigbee, CR2032, −10 to 55 °C, 2400–2483.5 MHz at max 9.99 dBm, manufacturer Lumi United Technology Co., Ltd., FCC ID 2AKIT-SJCGQ11LM, IC 22635-SJCGQ11LM. RESEARCH NOTE: WebFetch returned only PDF structure; the text had to be extracted locally to read the spec and regulatory pages. — vendor-manual research, verified 2026-07-19 · Three independent statements in Aqara's own materials. The manual: the sensor 'sends an instant alert notification via app'. The manual's range-test procedure: listen for whether 'the Hub makes voice prompts'. The product page at aqara.com/us/product/water-sensor/: the sensor 'will trigger the Hub to sound an alarm and send a notification to your phone'. No vendor material describes an onboard sounder. — vendor-manual and vendor-page research, verified 2026-07-19 · us.aqara.com/products/water-leak-sensor states 'An Aqara hub is required.'; the US spec sheet at us.aqara.com/pages/product-specs/water-leak-sensor lists 'Hub Requirement: YES (AQARA HUB)'; the printed quick start guide states 'Aqara Hub is required to enable Aqara Water Leak Sensor to work with HomeKit technology.' UNRESOLVED: no first-party hub-by-hub compatibility matrix was located, and store-support.aqara.com renders 'No content yet' for both the manual and FAQ of this product — the hub list is therefore indicative, aggregated from retailer and community sources. — vendor-page and vendor-manual research, verified 2026-07-19 · A csa-iot.org certified-products search filtered to manufacturer Lumi United returned no Aqara water-leak product, while returning Eltako, Grimsholm, Heiman, IKEA KLIPPBOK and Shelly Flood Gen4 for the same device type — so the absence is a filtered negative, not a failed search. Structurally the device is a Zigbee-only endpoint; Matter exposure happens at the hub, which bridges it. Aqara's developer platform (opendoc.aqara.com) confirms the Matter Water Leak Detector device type in its supported list with Boolean State mapping. — registry research, verified 2026-07-19 · us.aqara.com/products/water-leak-sensor prose says 'Compatible with the Aqara Hub, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa' while the structured 'Compatible with' badges on the same page list only Aqara, Apple Home, Alexa and IFTTT. us.aqara.com/pages/explorecompatible-platforms does list Google Home with 'Hub may be required for certain ecosystems or functionalities'. Recorded as partial on that unresolved conflict rather than resolving it in the vendor's favour. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-07-19 · SmartThings is absent from this product's compatibility badges on Aqara's US store. us.aqara.com/products/hub-m3 carries a SmartThings badge, describes the hub as exposing 'existing Aqara Zigbee devices to Matter-compatible apps', and adds the caveat 'Features may vary depending on the Matter app'. No first-party document confirms this specific SKU appearing in SmartThings — it is inferred from hub-level documentation plus the Matter device-type list. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-07-19 · zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/SJCGQ11LM.html documents this exact model as supported against a generic Zigbee coordinator with no Aqara hub, exposing water_leak, battery percentage, voltage, device temperature, power-outage count and trigger count, and notes battery 'can take up to 24 hours before reported'. This is a community integration, not a vendor-supported path. — counterparty-source research, verified 2026-07-19 · us.aqara.com/products/hub-m3 states automations 'run locally and will run even if there is no internet connection' while 'cloud-based notifications' require internet. IMPORTANT SCOPE LIMIT: this statement is made for the Hub M3 only. No equivalent statement was found for the M1S, E1 or G2H, so local-automation behaviour on older hubs is recorded as unestablished rather than assumed from the M3. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-07-19 · Aqara's Valve Controller T1 pages describe a battery-powered actuator that clamps onto an existing lever or butterfly valve (DN15/20/25) without plumbing work, stating 'Pair it with water leak sensors for automatic shutdown when leaks are detected'; aqara.com/us/product/water-sensor/ separately documents 'Automatically Turns the Water Off When Used with Solenoid Water Valve', and the sensor's probes can be unscrewed and wired to extension cables. The valve controller is a separate purchase and itself requires an Aqara hub, so automatic shutoff is a sensor-plus-valve-plus-hub system, not a $19 fix. The Valve Controller pages were reached via search snippets rather than direct fetch. — vendor-page research (partly via search snippets), verified 2026-07-19 · us.aqara.com/products/water-leak-sensor showed $18.99, in stock, 2026-07-19. Amazon listings B07D39MSZS and B09WQPJBTQ returned head/script-only anti-bot shells with no extractable price or date-first-available. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-07-19 · aqara.com/en/product/water-leak-sensor-t1/ documents a genuine successor on Zigbee 3.0 with OTA firmware updates, same 50×50×15 mm form factor and CR2032. Aqara's US direct store does not list it — us.aqara.com/products/water-leak-sensor-t1 returns HTTP 404 — while Best Buy sells it in the US (SKU 6568826, roughly $17.99–$20.99). UNRESOLVED: no vendor statement establishes whether the T1 supersedes SJCGQ11LM in the US or the two are sold in parallel, so supersededBy is deliberately left empty rather than guessed. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-07-19 · Aqara's own materials disagree in several places: Google appears in prose but not in the compatibility badges; IP67 is on the global product page but absent from the US spec sheet; and the T1 spec page prints an operating range of '0 °C ~ 55 °C (14 °F ~ 131 °F)' where 0 °C is 32 °F, a straight conversion error. Recorded because it bears on how much weight any single Aqara page should carry. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-07-19. This is a research profile: compiled from manufacturer documentation, certification registries, and published testing — we state facts, not verdicts, and we have not physically tested this unit. How we work →
Compatibility and lifecycle information reflects the last-verified date above and can change without notice (firmware updates, cloud-service changes, discontinuations). It is provided as-is, for information — verify with the manufacturer before purchasing. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it. Full terms: Terms of Service.