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HACS vs Home Assistant Operating System

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted home automation options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
HA HACS Community store for custom Home Assistant integrations and themes VS HO Home Assistant Operating System Embedded operating system optimized for Home Assistant
FeatureHACSHome Assistant Operating System
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguagePythonPython
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM64 MB1,024 MB
Deploymentsourceone-click, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 7,603★ 7,390
First released20192019
ReplacesSmartThings community add-onsSmartThings, Hubitat

Why pick each one

Choose HACS if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Mature project with 7.6k GitHub stars
  • Written in Python
HACS details

Choose Home Assistant Operating System if…

  • Easiest full-featured HA install
  • Managed add-ons
Home Assistant Operating System details

Frequently asked questions

Is HACS or Home Assistant Operating System better?

Neither is universally better. HACS has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are HACS and Home Assistant Operating System free and open-source?

Yes. HACS is licensed under MIT and Home Assistant Operating System under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run HACS and Home Assistant Operating System with Docker?

HACS: check the project docs for container support. Home Assistant Operating System: check the project docs for container support.

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