# ESPHome 54 Hacker News commenters recommended ESPHome and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** People recommend ESPHome for building custom smart home devices with online updates, logs and simple YAML configuration; the most common caveat is slow, heavy compiles. ## Why people recommend it - Easy YAML configuration without much code (6 comments): "I told the agent to get rid of all custom stuff and wherever possible just use default esphome yaml, now it's been working fine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49063137)) "Plus, once it recompiles it automagically uploads so just make your changes and forget about it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47403324)) "you could have skipped the custom firmware and just used ESPHome with a Button component" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107255)) - Works with Home Assistant (5 comments): "ESPHome is the easiest way to integrate custom devices into your HomeAssistant with online updates, logs, and other functionality." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549708)) "come with open-source ESPHome firmware pre-installed, and they have all of the features I've described above" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275769)) "Flash ESPHome and you can get live statistics in your Home Assistant dashboard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783879)) - Full local control and transparency (4 comments): "With ESPHome you know exactly what the device is doing because you have 100% control over it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837630)) "emulate them with ESPHome to make them "smart" fully offline under my control." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48799818)) "I can inspect and modify the behaviors of everything with free and open tools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49215918)) - Bluetooth proxy for BLE devices (4 comments): "There's a standard esphome component that just turns any esp32 with appropriate h/w into a BTLE proxy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49604518)) "any supported BLE sensor [0] with a Bluetooth proxy ESPHome node should work." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903319)) "BLE devices over an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy work surprisingly well too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45840021)) ## What people warn about - Heavy compile and Arduino bloat (3 comments): "The ESP stuff is a surprisingly heavy compile for a puny microcontroller." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397875)) "ESPHome for example still will generally use the Arduino HAL/Framework" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277698)) "I can't stand all the bloat of Arduino/Platform.io/ESPHome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990695)) - Gaps in some hardware support (2 comments): "my 433 MHz transceiver does not seem to work well with esphome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739403)) "Maybe ESPHome has IR support but I used a micropython library" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107264)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [WLED](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wled.md): 8 recommend - [Tasmota firmware](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tasmota.md): 5 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "ESPHome", https://hackerapproved.com/p/esphome/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).