What has changed with Home Assistant Cloud?
On 2 October 2026 the Home Assistant team published a blog post titled "Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we're renaming ours". Home Assistant Cloud, the subscription run by Nabu Casa, becomes Home Assistant Link. The team says the old name confused newcomers, some of whom assumed "Cloud" meant the whole installation ran on remote servers. It also says the word has come to stand for rising subscription prices, outages and data harvesting.
The announcement frames the change as a rename only. The features listed are the same as before: remote access from outside the home, Alexa and Google Home integration, online speech-to-text, private encrypted backup storage and support from real people. The post also mentions a few recent improvements, including a new account page and a settings page with a setup wizard.
The change is tied to the December 2026 release (2026.12), according to coverage of the announcement, and the team was still asking for community feedback in the meantime. Nabu Casa's own pricing page already uses the Link name.
Does anything change for existing Home Assistant Cloud subscribers?
Based on the announcement, no: the service, the features and the price are described as unchanged, and nobody needs to re-subscribe or migrate. The post does not say whether the cloud integration name, entity names or your ui.nabu.casa remote URL will be touched, so treat any of those as unconfirmed until the 2026.12 release notes land.
If you have automations, templates or dashboards that reference Cloud-related entities, it is sensible to read the 2026.12 breaking-changes list before updating, as you would for any release. Our Home Assistant backup and restore guide is worth a skim at the same time, because encrypted off-site backups are one of the main things the subscription provides.
How much does Home Assistant Link cost in the UK?
Nabu Casa lists Home Assistant Link at £6.50 a month or £65 a year, which is ten months' payment for twelve. There is a 31-day free trial and Nabu Casa says no card details are needed to start it. Prices can change, so check the pricing page before subscribing.
| What you get | Included with Link | Free alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Remote access | Yes, end-to-end encrypted via Nabu Casa servers | VPN or your own reverse proxy |
| Alexa and Google Home control | Yes | Manual setup with your own cloud developer accounts |
| Speech-to-text and text-to-speech | Yes, online | Self-hosted voice add-ons |
| Off-site backups | Yes, encrypted | Your own NAS or cloud storage |
| Support | Limited to Link features | Community forum |
Why does this matter for Home Assistant users?
For most people it matters very little day to day, but it clarifies something that has long confused new users: Home Assistant itself runs locally, and Link is an optional extra. Your lights, sensors and automations keep working without a subscription, as they always have.
Where the subscription earns its keep is the awkward bits of a local-first setup. Remote access without opening router ports is the big one, and the Home Assistant voice assistant setup is far easier with online speech-to-text than with a self-hosted model on a small box. If you are buying a box to run it on, our Home Assistant Green review covers the official hardware.
There is also a funding angle. Nabu Casa says the majority of profits from subscriptions go to the Open Home Foundation, the non-profit that backs the project, so paying for Link is also the project's main way of funding development without ads or venture capital.
Should you subscribe to Home Assistant Link?
Only if one of those conveniences is worth £65 a year to you. If you are comfortable running a VPN such as WireGuard or Tailscale and a spare drive for backups, you can replicate most of it for free. If you want remote access that just works, or you share the setup with family who will not touch a VPN, the subscription is a reasonable price.
The rename is not a reason to act either way. Existing subscribers do not need to do anything, and the 31-day trial makes it easy to try before you commit.
What we don't know yet
The announcement does not say how the rename will show up inside the app and settings screens, whether any technical identifiers change, or whether pricing will shift alongside the new name. We will update this page when the 2026.12 release notes confirm the details.
