SHSelfHostIndex

Home Assistant vs card-mod

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 Open-source home automation that puts privacy first VS CA card-mod Apply custom CSS styles to Home Assistant Lovelace cards
FeatureHome Assistantcard-mod
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseApache-2.0MIT
LanguagePythonTypeScript
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM1,024 MB32 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, one-clicksource
GitHub stars★ 89,795★ 1,773
First released20132019
ReplacesSmartThings, Google Homeproprietary dashboard theming tools

Why pick each one

Choose Home Assistant if…

  • Huge device support
  • Local control and privacy
  • Very active community
Home Assistant details

Choose card-mod if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Active community (1.8k GitHub stars)
  • Written in TypeScript
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 32 MB RAM
card-mod details

Frequently asked questions

Is Home Assistant or card-mod better?

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

Are Home Assistant and card-mod free and open-source?

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

Can I run Home Assistant and card-mod with Docker?

Home Assistant: yes. card-mod: check the project docs for container support.

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