SHSelfHostIndex

HACS vs Piper

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 PI Piper Fast, local neural text-to-speech for voice assistants
FeatureHACSPiper
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseMITMIT
LanguagePythonC++
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB256 MB
Deploymentsourcedocker, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 7,603★ 5,066
First released20192023
ReplacesSmartThings community add-onsAmazon Polly, Google TTS

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 Piper if…

  • Natural-sounding offline TTS
  • Very efficient
Piper details

Frequently asked questions

Is HACS or Piper better?

HACS is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Piper if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are HACS and Piper free and open-source?

Yes. HACS is licensed under MIT and Piper under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run HACS and Piper with Docker?

HACS: check the project docs for container support. Piper: yes.

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