SHSelfHostIndex

HACS vs Home Assistant Companion

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 Companion Self-hosted backend pairing for Home Assistant mobile apps
FeatureHACSHome Assistant Companion
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguagePythonKotlin
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentsourcesource
GitHub stars★ 7,603★ 3,788
First released20192020
ReplacesSmartThings community add-onsGoogle Home app

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 Companion if…

  • Turns phones into sensors
  • Tight HA integration
Home Assistant Companion details

Frequently asked questions

Is HACS or Home Assistant Companion 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 Companion free and open-source?

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

Can I run HACS and Home Assistant Companion with Docker?

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

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