Hubs & dongles that work with Home Assistant

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

At £38 it sits between ConBee III (£37) and SMLIGHT's PoE coordinator (£61), and for most Home Assistant users it's the easier call: Nabu Casa builds and supports it directly, it's the only stick with an official teardown-free Zigbee/Thread switch, and the extension cable ships in the box rather than being an afterthought — treat that cable as non-negotiable, since USB 3.0 ports are a known interference source for 2.4GHz radios. Pick ConBee III instead only if you specifically want deCONZ's REST API; pick the SMLIGHT if you need PoE placement away from your server. Otherwise ZBT-2 is the default choice.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

The official 800-series Z-Wave adapter, and the one to buy in the UK over older 700-series sticks or the similarly-priced Aeotec Z-Stick 7 (no Long Range) — it runs mesh and Long Range together and auto-configures to the UK/EU 868 MHz region. Z-Wave still edges Zigbee for door locks and battery sensors on its own quieter sub-GHz band, so it's worth running alongside a Zigbee coordinator rather than choosing one exclusively. Long Range is the real draw for sheds, garages and outbuildings a Zigbee mesh would otherwise need repeaters to reach. Not a pocket dongle: it's a separated antenna-and-base unit kept clear of USB interference — plan desk space.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT supported
• not supported

This is Nabu Casa's own voice assistant hardware — and the 'Preview Edition' name is honest: expect occasional rough edges as wake-word accuracy and language support keep evolving. The pitch is real though. Unlike Alexa or Google Home, nothing is stored or profiled; voice runs fully local on capable Home Assistant hardware (Intel N100 or better) or via Home Assistant Cloud, which trades a touch of latency for far better accuracy on lower-powered setups. Best suited to households already committed to Home Assistant who want a genuinely private mic in the room — not a first assistant for casual smart-speaker buyers.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

The official plug-and-play Home Assistant hub and the easiest way for UK beginners to start — no SD cards, no flashing, no OS choices, just plug into your router and go. At £159 it's pricier than building your own on a Raspberry Pi 5 (roughly £100 for board, case and SSD), and a used mini PC with an N100 chip will out-muscle it for the same money if you plan to run Frigate or heavy add-ons. What you're paying for is zero setup friction and one soldered eMMC drive nothing can go wrong with — ideal for true beginners who just want a hub that works, less ideal for tinkerers who'll outgrow the fixed 32GB storage and lack of built-in radios within a year.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT supported
• not supported

The budget DIY voice satellite the community was building years before the official Voice Preview Edition existed — a sub-£15, thumb-sized ESP32 board with a mic and speaker. Flash it with ESPHome, register it as an Assist Satellite, and pair with openWakeWord for hands-free voice control in a second room. It needs manual flashing and YAML, so it's not a plug-and-play product. USB-C powers it directly with no internal battery, so it needs to stay plugged in — no cordless placement. A Grove expansion connector and a handful of GPIO pins are broken out too, useful if you want to bolt on a sensor rather than just use it as a mic/speaker satellite. As a cheap way to add extra voice satellites around the house alongside the official hardware, nothing else comes close on price.

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

The best-value Zigbee coordinator in the UK at well under £20 — an EFR32MG21 with +20dBm output that just works with ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT. If you're building your first Zigbee network on a budget, start here. It ships pre-flashed with EZSP coordinator firmware, so there's no manual flashing step. At a compact 75×25.5×13.5mm it's barely bigger than a regular USB stick, but Sonoff doesn't bundle a USB extension cable in the box — the external SMA antenna is worth moving off a cheap 1-2m USB-A extension lead you supply yourself, to get it clear of your PC or NAS case and away from other radios for better range.

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

The TI CC2652P sibling to the Silicon Labs-based ZBDongle-E already in this list — a different chipset with its own firmware/flashing story (Z-Stack 3.x), +20dBm output and an external SMA antenna. The antenna ships in the box but isn't pre-fitted, so screw it on before first use. No USB extension cable is included; grab a cheap one anyway, since keeping the dongle off a PC's USB3 ports cuts interference. Aluminium housing keeps it compact despite the aerial. With over 5,000 UK reviews at a mid-4-star average, it's one of the most battle-tested coordinators going — solid if you'd rather run Z-Stack than EmberZNet, or just want the cheapest reliable ZHA/Zigbee2MQTT entry point.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• supported

If you're running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 5, this powers it over the Ethernet cable instead of a separate USB-C brick — handy for mounting the Pi centrally near your Zigbee/Thread coordinator rather than next to a socket. There's no official Raspberry Pi 5 PoE+ HAT yet (the old official one doesn't fit the new connector layout), so this third-party board is currently the go-to. It's pure power hardware — no software integration, it just keeps the box that runs HA alive. Being a stacked board over the GPIO header, it will occupy that connector, so check compatibility before also fitting a GPIO-dependent HAT like a Zigbee or Z-Wave add-on board.

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

SMLIGHT's USB dongle line, sitting below the Ethernet/PoE SLZB-06M and the MR2U router/border-router already in this list — same EFR32MG21 radio in an 18x54x10mm, 14g stick with a +20dB amp and rotatable external antenna. No extension cable in the box, just the stick, antenna, and a manual QR card — SMLIGHT says its four-layer PCB cancels host-side USB interference instead. Ignore "Thread/Matter" wording on some Amazon listings: treat the base SLZB-07 as Zigbee-only. Buy this over the 06M for a cheap, plug-and-play ZHA/Zigbee2MQTT coordinator on the HA machine itself; buy the 06M if you need it mounted away from the server, or the MR2U to extend mesh coverage instead.

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

Third-generation ConBee, and still the pick if you specifically want deCONZ/Phoscon rather than plain ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT — that first-party REST API is the one trick no TI or Silicon Labs stick offers. At around £37 it costs more than Home Assistant's own ZBT-2 (roughly £30-35), which ships with a USB extension lead in the box, uses the newer MG24 chip, and has an external antenna versus ConBee III's internal one — so budget for your own extension cable if you're tucking it behind a router. Choose ZBT-2 for a fresh build; choose ConBee III only if deCONZ is the actual reason you're buying.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

Price is close to the official ZWA-2 (around £46 vs £51), so the real trade-off is form factor and chip generation, not cost. The Z-Stick 7 is a pocket dongle — 37 x 17mm, plugging flush into a laptop or Pi with zero desk footprint — versus the ZWA-2's separated antenna-and-base unit that needs shelf space. You lose Z-Wave Long Range and get the older 700-series radio instead of 800-series; Aeotec's own Z-Stick 10 Pro adds LR if you need it. Pick this for a compact, no-fuss UK/EU setup; pick the ZWA-2 for the newer chip, LR reach, and official Nabu Casa backing.

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

The Zigbee2MQTT community's favourite coordinator: Ethernet with PoE lets you mount it centrally in the house instead of tethering it to your server, killing dead zones. At £61 it's nearly double Home Assistant's own ZBT-2/SkyConnect (£30-35) or the ConBee III (£37) — and if your switch isn't already PoE-capable, add £10-15 for an injector. That premium only pays off in larger UK houses or multi-floor flats where the server sits nowhere near the devices; USB mode is available too, but then you're paying more than ZBT-2 for the same result. Works with Z2M and ZHA over the network.

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi not supported
• Thread supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

A dual-radio (CC2652P + EFR32MG21) box, 160x24x28mm, that runs as a Zigbee router/repeater to kill dead spots, or gets reflashed as a Matter-over-Thread border router — useful if your coordinator sits in a cupboard and you need proper mesh coverage at the far end of the house. Power via USB-C or 802.3af PoE, but PoE means a standard injector or PoE switch — it isn't included. This is for people fixing a genuine coverage gap with hardwired placement, not a shortcut to buy a second coordinator instead of solving the mesh properly; pair it with one of the dongles already in this list.

• Zigbee supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi supported
• Thread supported
• Matter supported
• BT supported
• not supported

The pick for anyone with a drawer full of Aqara sensors: the M3 bridges them locally over Matter, or HomeKit via homekit_controller, and doubles as a Thread border router for other Matter kit. It is not a general-purpose Zigbee coordinator for ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT — it only talks to its own Aqara devices. Setup still needs an Aqara account and app, even though day-to-day bridging then runs locally. That's the real trade-off against Home Assistant's own Connect ZBT-2, a bare 802.15.4 radio with zero cloud dependency, or Home Assistant Green. At 105x105x36.5mm and £109.99, the M3 only earns its keep if you're already committed to Aqara's ecosystem.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT supported
• not supported

The DIY route: flash Home Assistant OS onto a Pi 5 and you get real headroom over a Green for Frigate or local voice — though an 8GB kit now costs more than Green's £159, so this is about tinkering power, not savings. For heavy multi-camera Frigate or a stacked add-on list, a mini PC like Beelink's N150 (dual 2.5G LAN, six NVMe slots) offers more headroom still, with less fiddling to keep stable. Buy this if you want to pick your own storage and enjoy building the box; skip it if you just want a hub that works out of the box — that's what Green is for.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi supported
• Thread supported
• Matter supported
• BT supported
• not supported

Not Home Assistant hardware at all — but if you already own one for Apple TV duties, the Wi-Fi + Ethernet 128GB model doubles as a genuinely solid Thread border router that Home Assistant's built-in Thread/Matter support can share a mesh with, via Matter's multi-admin fabric support. Only the 128GB Wi-Fi+Ethernet SKU works well this way; the 64GB Wi-Fi-only model isn't a reliable Thread border router. Buy a SkyConnect-class dongle if this is the only reason you're shopping — this only makes sense as a bonus for existing Apple TV owners.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT supported
• not supported

Overkill for Home Assistant alone, but genuinely useful if you also want Frigate, Zigbee2MQTT and a Plex library on the same box — an Intel N150 with dual 2.5G LAN and six M.2 NVMe slots gives you server-grade headroom for a fraction of NAS-brand pricing. It's a 99mm cube, small enough to tuck behind a monitor, and idles low enough for genuine 24/7 duty without a leftover desktop's running costs. Against a Raspberry Pi 5: the Pi is simpler and cheaper for HAOS alone, but this trades that simplicity for real multi-VM headroom and six drive bays. Install HAOS as a VM under Proxmox rather than dedicating the whole box to it.

• Zigbee not supported
• Z-Wave not supported
• Wi-Fi supported
• Thread not supported
• Matter not supported
• BT not supported
• not supported

Battery backup for the box running Home Assistant, not a smart-home protocol device — but a power cut taking down your lighting and heating controller too is a real problem. Compact at 85 x 56mm, it bottom-mounts via pogo pins so the Pi 5's GPIO header stays free for other HATs. Bring your own 18650 cells: Geekworm rates up to 6 hours' runtime on two decent cells, though real-world figures depend on load. It's Pi 5-specific — the mount rules out HA Green, a Pi 4, or any other SBC. No native (core) HA integration — a community HACS integration covers the X120x family and exposes battery and power-loss entities without the DIY route below — but either way it just keeps the server alive through a blip and shuts down cleanly if the outage runs long.