Home Assistant vs OpenHAB: Which Smart Home Platform Should You Actually Pick?

You've decided to run your smart home on open source software instead of trusting Google, Amazon, or Apple with your data. Smart move. But now you're staring at two options that keep coming up: Home Assistant and OpenHAB.

Both are free. Both are open source. Both can control thousands of devices locally. So which one do you pick?

After spending years in both ecosystems (and helping people migrate between them), here's the honest breakdown.

The Short Answer

For most people: Home Assistant. It's easier to set up, has far more integrations, a massive community, and gets monthly updates with new features. The learning curve is gentler, and you'll be up and running in an afternoon.

OpenHAB is better for one specific type of person: someone who wants maximum control over every rule, prefers text-based configuration, and values long-term stability over rapid feature additions. Think "sysadmin who enjoys writing YAML" rather than "person who wants a nice dashboard."

Now, the details.

What Each Platform Actually Is

Home Assistant

Home Assistant started in 2013 as a Python project by Paulus Schoutsen. It has since grown into the most popular open source smart home platform in the world, with over 70,000 GitHub stars and millions of active installations.

The company behind it (Nabu Casa) sells optional cloud subscriptions and hardware (like the Home Assistant Green and Yellow), but the core software is completely free and works locally without any cloud connection.

Home Assistant is known for:

• A polished web-based UI that works on phone and desktop
• 2,800+ official integrations (and thousands more community-built ones)
• Monthly releases with significant new features
• A huge, active community (Reddit, Discord, forums)
• Strong focus on making smart homes accessible to non-developers

OpenHAB

OpenHAB (Open Home Automation Bus) launched in 2010, making it older than Home Assistant. It's built in Java and runs on the Eclipse SmartHome framework. It's maintained by the openHAB Foundation, a German non-profit.

OpenHAB is known for:

• Rock-solid stability (fewer breaking changes between versions)
• Powerful text-based rule engine (for people who like writing code)
• Strong enterprise-grade architecture
• 400+ official "bindings" (their term for integrations)
• A smaller but dedicated community

Side-by-Side Comparison

Ease of Use: The Biggest Difference

This is where the two platforms diverge the most.

Home Assistant has invested heavily in making things work from the browser. You can discover devices, set up integrations, build automations, and create dashboards all from the web UI without ever touching a config file. The onboarding wizard walks you through initial setup, and most Zigbee/WiFi/Matter devices are auto-discovered.

That doesn't mean it's "easy" in the way that a Google Home app is easy. There's still a learning curve, especially for automations. But compared to where it was five years ago, the improvement is dramatic.

OpenHAB has a different philosophy. While it added a UI in recent versions (MainUI), the traditional approach is text-based configuration. You define your "things" (devices), "items" (data points), and "rules" (automations) in separate text files. Many experienced OpenHAB users still prefer this approach because it gives them fine-grained control and version-controllable configs.

The MainUI is getting better, but it still feels like a work in progress compared to Home Assistant's dashboard. Configuration through the UI is possible for basic setups, but anything complex usually sends you back to text files.

Device Support and Integrations

This is Home Assistant's strongest card. With over 2,800 official integrations (and thousands more through HACS, the community add-on store), Home Assistant supports almost every smart home device, service, and protocol you can think of.

Some examples of what Home Assistant can talk to:

• Zigbee and Z-Wave devices (via ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT, or Z-Wave JS)
• Matter and Thread devices
• Philips Hue, IKEA, Aqara, Sonoff, Shelly
• Nest thermostats, Ring doorbells, Sonos speakers
• Your car (Tesla, BMW, Volkswagen, and more)
• Your robot vacuum (Roborock, Dreame, iRobot)
• Weather services, energy monitors, solar panels
• Calendar, email, Spotify, Plex, media players

OpenHAB has around 400 official bindings. That covers the major protocols and popular devices, but the gap is significant. If you have a niche device or a newer product, chances are someone already built a Home Assistant integration for it. With OpenHAB, you might need to wait, write your own binding, or use MQTT as a bridge.

The pace is different too. When a new device or service launches, a Home Assistant integration typically appears within days or weeks. OpenHAB bindings can take months.

Automations and Rules

Both platforms can do complex automations, but they take very different approaches.

Home Assistant automations

Home Assistant offers three ways to build automations:

1. Visual automation editor. A browser-based builder where you pick triggers, conditions, and actions from dropdown menus. Great for simple stuff like "turn on the lights when motion is detected after sunset."
2. YAML automations. For more complex logic, you write automations in YAML format. This gives you access to templates (Jinja2), complex conditions, and sequences.
3. Python scripts and AppDaemon. For truly complex logic, you can write Python scripts that interact with Home Assistant's API.

The visual editor handles 80% of what most people need. The remaining 20% usually involves YAML templates, which have a learning curve but are well documented.

OpenHAB rules

OpenHAB's rules engine is more flexible in some ways:

1. Rules DSL. OpenHAB's own domain-specific language for writing rules. It's similar to Java/Xtend and gives you full programming constructs (loops, variables, functions).
2. JavaScript (ECMAScript 2021+). You can write rules in modern JavaScript, which is familiar to many developers.
3. Blockly. A visual programming tool (like Scratch) for building rules without code.
4. Jython. Python-like scripting for rules.

If you're a developer, OpenHAB's rules engine is arguably more powerful. You can write proper functions, manage state, and build complex logic more naturally than in Home Assistant's YAML. The tradeoff is that simple automations take more effort to set up.

Dashboards and UI

Home Assistant's Lovelace dashboard is one of its standout features. Out of the box, it auto-generates a dashboard showing all your devices. From there, you can customize it with dozens of built-in card types (buttons, gauges, graphs, maps, media players) and thousands of community-built custom cards through HACS.

The result: people build genuinely beautiful, tablet-mounted dashboards that look like something out of a sci-fi movie. Browse the Home Assistant subreddit and you'll see floor plans with real-time sensor data, energy dashboards tracking solar production, and 3D renders of their homes with live device status.

OpenHAB's dashboard story is more fragmented:

• MainUI Pages: The newer approach. You build pages with widgets in the browser. It works, but the widget selection is smaller and customization requires more effort.
• HABPanel: An older dashboard system. Flexible but dated-looking.
• Sitemaps: The original way to build UIs in OpenHAB. Text-file defined, very basic.

OpenHAB's dashboards are functional. Home Assistant's dashboards can be beautiful. If a polished interface matters to you (and it matters to your household members who didn't choose the platform), this is a real consideration.

Hardware Requirements

Both platforms run on similar hardware:

• Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 (most popular for both)
• Any x86 mini PC (Intel NUC, Beelink, old laptop)
• Docker container on a NAS or server
• Virtual machine (Proxmox, ESXi, VirtualBox)

Home Assistant also offers dedicated hardware: the Home Assistant Green ($99) and Home Assistant Yellow ($149+), which are plug-and-play boxes designed specifically for it.

One difference: OpenHAB uses more RAM because it runs on Java. Expect it to use 500MB to 1GB on a typical installation. Home Assistant (Python-based) is generally lighter, though a heavily loaded instance can also climb past 1GB.

On a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM, both run fine. On a Pi 3 or a device with 1GB RAM, Home Assistant is the safer bet.

Community and Support

This is where the numbers tell a clear story.

Home Assistant:

• 70,000+ GitHub stars
• r/homeassistant: 500,000+ members
• Active Discord with thousands of users online
• Official forums with fast response times
• Hundreds of YouTube channels creating tutorials
• New blog posts and guides published daily

OpenHAB:

• 9,000+ GitHub stars
• r/openhab: ~15,000 members
• Official community forum (knowledgeable but smaller)
• Fewer tutorial creators, fewer guides

A larger community means faster answers to your questions, more tutorials covering your specific setup, and more people testing and improving the software. When you Google a Home Assistant problem, you'll find dozens of forum threads, blog posts, and YouTube videos. For OpenHAB problems, you might find one or two relevant threads.

That said, OpenHAB's community is tightly knit. The forums are active, and the core developers are accessible and helpful. It's a smaller group, but a dedicated one.

Stability and Reliability

This is where OpenHAB has a legitimate edge.

Home Assistant's monthly releases are exciting, but they sometimes break things. An integration that worked yesterday might need updating after a new release. The development team has gotten much better about this (with deprecation warnings and migration guides), but it's still a reality. Power users often wait a few days after a new release before updating.

OpenHAB takes a slower, more conservative approach. Major versions are less frequent, and the team prioritizes backward compatibility. If you set up your OpenHAB system and don't touch it, it will probably just keep working for years.

For a smart home that you just want to "set and forget," OpenHAB's stability is a genuine advantage. For a smart home that you actively tinker with and want the latest features, Home Assistant's pace is part of the fun.

Migrating Between Them

Already on one platform and thinking about switching? Here's the reality.

OpenHAB to Home Assistant: This is the more common direction. Most of your devices will be auto-discovered in Home Assistant (especially Zigbee, Z-Wave, and WiFi devices). You'll need to rebuild your automations and dashboards from scratch, but the devices themselves transfer easily because they use standard protocols. Budget a weekend for a medium-sized setup.

Home Assistant to OpenHAB: Less common, but doable. The biggest pain point is that Home Assistant integrations don't have 1:1 equivalents in OpenHAB. If you rely on niche integrations, check OpenHAB's binding list first. Automations will need complete rewriting in OpenHAB's rules format.

In both cases, your physical devices (Zigbee sensors, WiFi plugs, etc.) don't care what software you run. They'll pair with whatever platform you point them at.

Pick Home Assistant If...

• You want the largest device compatibility list
• A polished, visual interface matters to you
• You want a large community with fast answers
• You prefer GUI-based configuration
• You like getting new features every month
• Other people in your household will also use the system
• You're migrating from Google Home or Alexa
• You want a mobile app that feels native
• You plan to use Matter devices

Pick OpenHAB If...

• You're a developer who prefers text-based configuration
• Long-term stability is more important than new features
• You want to write complex rules in JavaScript or a real programming language
• You value the non-profit, community-governed model
• You already have a Java/Docker setup and prefer that ecosystem
• You want a "set it and forget it" system with minimal updates
• You run it on a Synology NAS (OpenHAB has good Synology support)

The Verdict

Five years ago, this was a closer race. OpenHAB was more mature, and Home Assistant was scrappy but rough around the edges.

In 2026, Home Assistant has pulled significantly ahead for most users. The integration count, community size, UI polish, and monthly improvements make it the default recommendation. It's not perfect (YAML can be frustrating, updates occasionally break things, and the learning curve is real), but it's the platform where the smart home world is converging.

OpenHAB remains excellent for a specific audience: developers who want maximum control, text-based configs they can version control, and a system that doesn't surprise them with breaking changes. If that sounds like you, OpenHAB will serve you well.

For everyone else, including people migrating from Google Assistant, Alexa, or any cloud platform: start with Home Assistant. The community support alone will save you hours of troubleshooting.

Related reading

• Home Assistant for Beginners: Getting Started Guide
• Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi: Setup Guide
• Home Assistant Compatible Devices: Complete Guide
• Zigbee vs WiFi: Which Protocol to Pick
• Best Google Home Alternatives