Product Library / Water Protection & Plumbing

Aqara Water Leak Sensor

Compiled by SmartHomeWorkflow Research · Aqara · Water Protection & Plumbing · ~$19 ($18.99 on Aqara's own US store, re-verified 2026-08-12 against the structured storefront endpoint (SKU DTC-US-SN-WLS, available, compare_at_price null). The figure is unchanged from the 2026-07-19 read, but the reason changed: that read recorded $18.99 with a 10% discount showing, and today there is no discount — $18.99 is the list price. Same number, different meaning, which is why the note says so rather than leaving a stale 'discounted' framing in place. Amazon listings returned anti-bot shells to research tooling, so no Amazon price was verified.)

Compatibility

Protocols: ZIGBEE^[1][4][7]

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.^[2][3][9]

What it can do^[20]

Listed capabilities are what we could establish from vendor documentation. An ability missing here is unestablished — not necessarily absent.

Subscription reality^[16]

✓ Works without a subscription: Yes.

Vendor account required: Yes — you must create a vendor account to use it.^[21]

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^[1][2][8]

• Batteries: CR2032 coin cell, included and user-replaceable via a coin-turn back cover — expect roughly 24 months per set
• Works without the internet: Not established — we have not sourced this yet. It does not mean the product fails without the internet.
• 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.
• Security updates: Aqara states its security-update commitment for this model as a period rather than a date: at least 2 years from the launch day (UK-declared — the maker's legal commitment is filed for the United Kingdom). That is a floor measured from a starting point the manufacturer sets — a launch or a purchase — rather than a fixed end date, so it cannot be placed on a calendar here. We record the commitment as the manufacturer states it, in our words, rather than converting it into a date it did not give. This is a published commitment, not a gap in our research.^[15]

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

Numbered sources below back the facts marked with the matching number above. 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 →

1. [1] 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
   Backs: Product identity, Maintenance, Protocols
2. [2] 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
   Backs: Maintenance, Required hub or bridge
3. [3] 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
   Backs: Required hub or bridge
4. [4] 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
   Backs: Protocols
5. [5] 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
   Backs: Google Home compatibility
6. [6] 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
   Backs: SmartThings compatibility
7. [7] 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
   Backs: Home Assistant compatibility, Protocols
8. [8] 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
   Backs: Maintenance
9. [9] 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. ⊕ Upgraded 2026-07-31: this entry previously ended 'The Valve Controller pages were reached via search snippets rather than direct fetch.' Those pages have since been fetched directly and the Valve Controller T1 is now its own record (aqara-valve-controller-t1, $69.99, VC-X01E) — every claim above is confirmed at first-party source, and the caveat is retired rather than left standing after it stopped being true. — vendor-page research (partly via search snippets), verified 2026-07-19
   Backs: Required hub or bridge
10. [10] 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
    Backs: Price, Market availability
11. [11] 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
12. [12] 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
13. [13] Aqara Home is actively developed — Matter-bridge firmware shipped to the M2 hub in 2023, new hubs (M3, M100) continue to ship, and the developer platform at opendoc.aqara.com is live — migrated hand stamp, verified 2026-07-19
    Backs: Service status
14. [14] us.aqara.com/products/water-leak-sensor.js (the structured storefront endpoint, per the standing method rule to read stock and discount state from structured product data rather than rendered HTML) returned title 'Water Leak Sensor', available true, one variant 'Default Title', SKU DTC-US-SN-WLS, price 18.99, compare_at_price null on 2026-08-12. The rendered page agreed at $18.99 with an add-to-cart flow. The null compare_at is the finding: the 2026-07-19 read saw a 10% discount, and there is none today, so the same $18.99 is now the undiscounted list price. — structured storefront endpoint + vendor-page research, verified 2026-08-12
    Backs: Price, Market availability
15. [15] aqara.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/PSTI-statements-_-Water-Leak-Sensor.pdf, reached from Aqara's own compliance index at aqara.com/en/security-certifications/ (64 per-product PSTI PDFs published there). Retrieved and text-extracted locally on 2026-08-12. Names Product 'Water Leak Sensor', Brand 'Aqara', Model 'SJCGQ11LM', manufacturer Lumi United Technology Co., Ltd, declaring compliance with Schedule 2 of the UK PSTI Regulations 2023 and stating: 'we state that the defined support period for the product above is at least 2 years from the launch day.' Signed Lean Wang / Senior Certification Engineer; place and date of issue Shenzhen, China, April 9, 2024. The compliance index separately lists this model's PSTI statement as Active and an EU Data Act statement issued 2025-10-23. RECORDED BECAUSE THE STRONGEST AVAILABLE SOURCE CLASS STILL DID NOT PRODUCE A DATE: a per-product regulatory declaration outranks a general policy table, and this one is signed and model-specific — yet its period is anchored to 'launch day' for a product launched in 2018, so it cannot be turned into a forward date. The absence of a date here is a measured outcome, not an unsearched gap. — vendor regulatory declaration (PDF, text-extracted locally), verified 2026-08-12
    Backs: Security-update support period, Service status
16. [16] us.aqara.com/products/water-leak-sensor on 2026-08-12 still carries exactly four 'Works with' badges — Aqara, Apple Home, Alexa, IFTTT — with Google absent, and still states 'An Aqara hub is required'. The vendor's self-contradiction recorded on 2026-07-19 therefore persists unchanged: Google appears in Aqara's prose and on its platform-overview page (us.aqara.com/pages/explorecompatible-platforms, which lists Google Home among compatible platforms under the caveat 'Hub may be required for certain ecosystems or functionalities') while being absent from the badges on the page that sells the product. That is why the Google cell stays partial rather than full — re-verified, not merely carried forward. On subscription: the product page shows no plan, no gated capability and no upsell of any kind, and the page's own feature list presents app alerts and hub-siren triggering as included. Recorded with the same honesty boundary as before — this rests on a vendor page that creates no subscription, not on an Aqara pledge that sensors stay free. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-08-12
    Backs: Apple Home compatibility, Amazon Alexa compatibility, Google Home compatibility, Subscription
17. [17] BQ-107 re-verification batch 29, 2026-08-12. Every axis this record carries was re-read against current sources rather than carried forward: price and availability from the structured storefront endpoint, the compatibility badges and hub requirement from the product page, the platform-overview page for the standing Google contradiction, and Aqara's compliance library for the security-support question — which produced the signed per-product PSTI declaration for SJCGQ11LM. Outcome: no integration level moved, no protocol moved, and the price figure is unchanged. What changed is why the price is that figure (the discount is gone, so $18.99 is now list), and the security-support axis went from empty to a sourced explanation of why no date exists. — re-verification batch, verified 2026-08-12
    Backs: Research status
18. [18] Aqara Hub M3 product page, re-read 2026-08-18. ⚠ THE ONE CITED SOURCE THAT DOES SPEAK TO OUTAGES CANNOT SETTLE THIS RECORD, and the reason is on the axis: it states 'All the IR automations are local and will run even if there is no internet connection' and 'Local Cross-Hub Automation: Automations move from the cloud to local Edge, ensuring they work even when the internet is down. *Cloud push notifications still need an internet connection' — about the M3, a hub this sensor may or may not be paired with. This record's own hub note already records that no equivalent statement exists for the M1S, E1 or G2H. A value written here would be a claim about the buyer's hub choice rather than about the sensor, so it stays unknown. — vendor-page research, verified 2026-08-18
19. [19] No new source read — this entry records a field-shape change to an existing, already-cited fact. — schema follow-through (#348); no verification performed, verified 2026-08-19
20. [20] aqara.com/us/product/water-sensor/, read 2026-08-20: "When the water level reaches up to 0.5mm, the Water Leak Sensor will trigger the Hub to sound an alarm and send a notification to your phone", and the feature heading "Automatically Turns the Water Off When Used with Solenoid Water Valve". — vendor-page research, verified 2026-08-20
    Backs: Capabilities
21. [21] Aqara Water Leak Sensor user manual, 'Quick Setup' — "1. Before activating the accessory, please make sure you have the Aqara Home app downloaded and Aqara hub installed." Aqara's product page repeats the hardware half: "An Aqara hub is required." (https://www.aqara.com/us/product/water-sensor/, read 2026-08-21) — vendor-page research, verified 2026-08-21
    Backs: Vendor account required
22. [22] SmartHomeWorkflow record maintenance (BQ-250 securitySupport.region backfill) — internal-review of the document this record already cites, verified 2026-08-27
23. [23] Record-keeping entry: the migrated research stamp was retired from this record on 2026-08-30 — internal, verified 2026-08-30

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.

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