Home Assistant Cloud becomes Home Assistant Link: much more than just a name change

Home Assistant likes to do things differently. While most players in the smart home space are still putting the word “Cloud” front and center, Nabu Casa is removing it entirely from its online service. Starting December 2, 2026, with version 2026.12, Home Assistant Cloud will be called Home Assistant Link.

The message is clear: for Home Assistant, the cloud is a bonus, not a requirement for the home to work. And Nabu Casa doesn’t mince words: “Big Tech ruined the cloud.” The tech giants ruined the cloud—that’s quite a claim.

Home Assistant Cloud becomes Home Assistant Link on December 2

If you’re already a subscriber, you don’t need to do anything. No new service, no new subscription: the name change will happen automatically with Home Assistant 2026.12. Nabu Casa promises “zero disruption”: same subscription, same features, new name.

Link remains the optional service we know: hassle-free remote access, connection to Alexa and Google Assistant, online voice processing, and backups stored away from home.

Even Nabu Casa’s logo is getting the treatment: the little cloud is gone.

Why Home Assistant no longer wants the word “Cloud”

At its heart, it was a matter of consistency.

For years, Home Assistant has championed a smart home that runs locally, without depending on a manufacturer’s servers. That’s a big part of what made it successful. Under those circumstances, it’s hard to recommend avoiding cloud-dependent devices while selling a service called… Home Assistant Cloud.

Paulus Schoutsen, founder of Home Assistant and president of the Open Home Foundation, also spent quite a bit of time explaining the difference during his talks. Some newcomers even thought Home Assistant Cloud was used to host Home Assistant on the Internet, which was never the case.

Home Assistant runs in your home, on your own hardware. Nabu Casa’s service simply opens connections to a few online services when they genuinely add value. “Link”—a link between your installation and the outside world—describes it much better than “Cloud.”

A pointed dig at the smart home giants

Nabu Casa is taking the opportunity to contrast its view of the cloud with that of the major platforms, and the criticism boils down to one word: dependence.

When a light bulb or camera depends entirely on its manufacturer’s servers, the manufacturer is in control. If its servers go down, some features disappear. If it raises prices, your device costs you more. And if it shuts down its service, a product that works perfectly can lose some of its features overnight. We’ve seen this happen several times already.

With Link, the subscription remains optional. Home Assistant works without a subscription. If you cancel, your automations, lights, and sensors keep running just as before. To me, that’s where it differs most from the offerings of the major platforms.

Nabu Casa also highlights privacy: data passing through Link is encrypted, and the infrastructure was designed so the company can’t access users’ personal data. Paulus Schoutsen puts it quite aptly: rather than asking people to trust the company not to exploit their data, it’s better for the company simply not to have access to it.

What is Home Assistant Link actually for?

The idea is to reserve the Internet for features that really need it, or for those where an online service makes life a lot easier.

Remote access, for example. You can certainly set it up yourself with a VPN, port forwarding, or a secure tunnel. But not everyone wants to fiddle with their router’s settings, and Link takes care of it in just a few clicks. It’s also what I use to connect to Home Assistant at my vacation property, which runs using a 4G router.

It’s the same for Alexa and Google Assistant: manual setup is possible, but it’s tedious, and Link automates most of it.

Off-site backups come to the rescue if the SD card or mini PC running Home Assistant gives out.

Then there’s voice. Home Assistant is doing a lot of work on local processing with Assist, but online recognition engines still support more languages and respond faster, especially on modest hardware. With Link, everyone can choose what works for their setup.

So the cloud is still allowed, as long as it’s useful.

There are changes under the hood, too

The name change is arriving alongside several less visible updates. There’s a new account management page, a new configuration interface in Home Assistant, and a setup assistant to guide you through getting started. Nabu Casa is also testing a new online voice recognition service in its Labs.

On the technical side, the remote access infrastructure has been migrated to a bare metal architecture, which routes each user to the nearest available server. Remote access should therefore be more responsive. This foundation is also intended to support future security and account management features.

In short, Link is bringing more than just a new name.

A subscription that also helps fund Home Assistant

Link has another distinguishing feature: it’s one of Home Assistant’s main sources of funding.

The service is operated by Nabu Casa, a commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation, and a good portion of the profits funds the foundation and the platform’s development. You can use Home Assistant perfectly well for free without Link, but subscribers are also helping fund the whole community.

A name that finally fits Home Assistant’s philosophy

You could see this name change as a simple marketing ploy. I think it’s a pretty clever choice.

Home Assistant isn’t rejecting the Internet. What it rejects is the idea that a smart home should need the Internet to work. If the connection goes down, the lights, heating, blinds, and automations should keep running. Online services are an extra for those who want them.

It’s also a message to the rest of the industry: a connected device shouldn’t become a paperweight just because its manufacturer shuts down its servers a few years after selling it. When you install equipment in your home that’s supposed to last ten, fifteen, or twenty years, it’s a real concern.

So, see you on December 2 with Home Assistant 2026.12. Subscribers will notice almost no difference, apart from the name.