These Home Assistant integrations let you ditch paid smart-home apps

Published Jul 17, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT Samir Makwana is a technology journalist and editor from India since past 18 years and his work appears on MakeUseOf, HowToGeek, GSMArena, BGR, GuidingTech, The Inquisitr, TechInAsia, TechWiser, and others. He has written news, features, and gadget reviews for national technology media publications. His passion is to help people with their technology problems and gadget purchases. For that, he has worked for some of the biggest international technology publications, covering news, explainers, how-to guides, listicles, and product-buying guides. He has worked as an editor and managed teams since 2015. His expertise broadly covers computers, smartphones, game consoles, headphones, smart home products, browsers, and apps. I bought smart devices and plugged them in around my house to build a smart home. To make the most of them, I even paid for the apps and features locked behind subscriptions. I told myself that it was a small price to pay to keep my gadgets smart. Before I knew it, I had amassed a stack of subscriptions I was paying for every month. My introduction to Home Assistant changed that. Beyond running everything on my own hardware, I preferred keeping my data local. I found select integrations that could do the same jobs as those subscriptions I was paying for. The only difference was that those jobs ran locally instead of on someone else’s server. Every week, I stumble onto another integration that fits right into my setup. Here are a few Home Assistant integrations that have replaced apps and subscriptions I used to pay for. Using the Frigate integration instead of paid camera subscriptions Managing camera feeds and NVR storage locally Frigate is one HACS integration that every smart home user eventually adopts. Most security camera systems offer live feeds. But features like person or motion detection or clip storage are veiled behind monthly charges. Camera feeds from compatible security cameras, such as Ring, Arlo, Wyze, Tapo, and others, can be pointed to Frigate. In return, the Frigate integration exposes the cameras, detections, and events to Home Assistant. The clips get stored on your own NVR storage, and you don’t have to pay anything extra for that. Frigate does all that detection locally on your hardware using the RTSP stream from your camera. For that, you’ll need a capable machine to ensure the detection part works fast. Building your own local voice assistant No need to send your voice to the cloud Using conversational AI with the voice assistants in smart homes now requires a subscription. If you want to use Alexa+ (for non-Prime users) or Google Home Premium, you need to upgrade the plans accordingly. In comparison, Home Assistant lets you use its built-in local Assist pipeline using the Wyoming connection layer with local apps for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and wake-word options. Install Whisper or Speech-to-Phrase for speech-to-text, Piper for text-to-speech, and openWakeWord for a custom wake word to build your own private voice assistant. You can run them as local services or Home Assistant apps. If you really want to enjoy conversational AI in Home Assistant, you can run a local LLM instance to make it work with Whisper, Piper, and Assist. That’ll ensure your local Assist pipeline runs entirely on your own hardware. Location and device tracking integration No third-party or platform-specific subscriptions Sharing location is tricky when your family uses a mix of iPhones and Androids, since many built-in options only work within one ecosystem. In that case, a dedicated service like Life360 serves well for location and device tracking. But it calls for paid plans for better geofencing and driving reports. For Apple device owners, the iCloud3 HACS integration is an excellent option that fetches data from the Find My app and iCloud account. Home Assistant’s Mobile app integration, built into the free companion app, works out great for mixed-device households. Another option is to use the OwnTracks integration, an open-source option for tracking location and devices. There are some trade-offs with that, like no built-in driving reports, and you’ll have to set everything up manually. Mealie integration for recipe planning You can skip meal-planning services Mealie is a self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner designed for modern homes. Once you connect it to Home Assistant, your meal plans can appear as calendar entities. That will help you plan your week and prepare a shopping list. The integration can also let you add items to a Mealie shopping list using your voice or automation. You can even use zone presence detection to remind you about items on your shopping list when you approach a store. Instead of several paid meal-planning services such as Plan to Eat ($39 annually), you can host Mealie yourself and use Home Assistant to connect your recipes, meal plans, and shopping routines to the rest of your smart home. Local To-do lists integration No need for special to-do list apps Home Assistant can also host fully local to-do lists using the Local To-do integration. The lists appear on Home Assistant’s dashboard, making it easy to maintain simple household checklists and tasks. Anyone in your family can add an item through Assist, and Home Assistant can trigger automations whenever someone adds an item or checks one off. This integration is by no means a replacement for a full-featured app like Todoist or TickTick. But if your family only needs a shared list of simple tasks, Home Assistant can remove that need for a dedicated app. ChoreOps integration for managing tasks Tracking chores need not be tedious Gamifying the chores for kids usually means using dedicated apps that track tasks, points, and rewards. But you can bring a similar system into Home Assistant with the ChoreOps HACS integration. ​ The integration lets you manage chores, track progress, and handle rewards from Home Assistant’s dashboard. Your child can claim chores, while you can approve rewards or apply bonuses and penalties directly from the dashboard. A wall-mounted tablet running the Home Assistant interface can let your kids interact with it to view their chores and progress. Connecting the system to automation and notifications can save you from paying separately for a subscription to track chores and reward points. Going local saves a buck where it counts The recurring subscription fees for smart home apps quickly add up to hundreds of dollars a year. I’m no longer handing over that money to companies while my hardware is clearly capable of supporting features. None of this meant ditching any manufacturer’s apps altogether. I still open them for initial setup and firmware updates. Home Assistant now handles everything those subscriptions used to charge me for. Home Assistant OS Windows, macOS, Linux iOS compatible Yes Android compatible Yes Home Assistant is the best way to connect your smart home systems together.