SHSelfHostIndex

Home Assistant Operating System vs ThingsBoard

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?
HO Home Assistant Operating System Embedded operating system optimized for Home Assistant VS TH ThingsBoard Open-source IoT platform for device management and data
FeatureHome Assistant Operating SystemThingsBoard
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonJava
Setup difficultyEasyHard
Min. RAM1,024 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentone-click, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 7,390★ 22,200
First released20192017
ReplacesSmartThings, HubitatAWS IoT, Azure IoT

Why pick each one

Choose Home Assistant Operating System if…

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

Choose ThingsBoard if…

  • Powerful IoT platform
  • Highly customizable dashboards
ThingsBoard details

Frequently asked questions

Is Home Assistant Operating System or ThingsBoard better?

Neither is universally better. ThingsBoard has the larger community, while Home Assistant Operating System is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

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

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

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

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

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