ESPHome
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 3 smart home firmware
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.
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.
59 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 54
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 92%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 1 year
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 54 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 11 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy YAML configuration without much code
“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.”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “It's not empowering to hand off the details” “Plus, once it recompiles it automagically uploads so just make your changes and forget about it”
Comment from 16 Mar 2026 on Hacker News “you could have skipped the custom firmware and just used ESPHome with a Button component”
Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)” - Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi”
- Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)”
- Comment from 4 Jul 2026 in “The bottleneck might be the air in the room”
Works with Home Assistant
“ESPHome is the easiest way to integrate custom devices into your HomeAssistant with online updates, logs, and other functionality.”
Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “Velxio 2.0 – Emulate Arduino, ESP32, and Raspberry Pi 3 in the Browser” “come with open-source ESPHome firmware pre-installed, and they have all of the features I've described above”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped” “Flash ESPHome and you can get live statistics in your Home Assistant dashboard”
Comment from 4 Jul 2026 in “The bottleneck might be the air in the room” - Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Muse Gadgets”
- Comment from 29 Mar 2026 in “Velxio 2.0 – Emulate Arduino, ESP32, and Raspberry Pi 3 in the Browser”
Full local control and transparency
“With ESPHome you know exactly what the device is doing because you have 100% control over it.”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products” “emulate them with ESPHome to make them "smart" fully offline under my control.”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “The Future of Flipper Zero Development” “I can inspect and modify the behaviors of everything with free and open tools”
Comment from 7 Aug 2026 in “Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice” - Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant”
Bluetooth proxy for BLE devices
“There's a standard esphome component that just turns any esp32 with appropriate h/w into a BTLE proxy”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “I Connected My Withings Body+ to Home Assistant with an ESP32” “any supported BLE sensor [0] with a Bluetooth proxy ESPHome node should work.”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi” “BLE devices over an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy work surprisingly well too”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products” - Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Home Assistant waters my plants”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavy compile and Arduino bloat
“The ESP stuff is a surprisingly heavy compile for a puny microcontroller.”
Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Home Assistant waters my plants” “ESPHome for example still will generally use the Arduino HAL/Framework”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’” “I can't stand all the bloat of Arduino/Platform.io/ESPHome”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Arduino Launches Plug-and-Play Modules for Long-Range Sensor Projects” Gaps in some hardware support
“my 433 MHz transceiver does not seem to work well with esphome”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “RF Hacking My Cloud-Controlled Ceiling Fan” “Maybe ESPHome has IR support but I used a micropython library”
Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)”
Other smart home firmware people recommend
The two most recommended other smart home firmware, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ESPHomeThis page | 54 | 5 | 92% | 11 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| WLED | 8 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| Tasmota firmware | 5 | 1 | 83% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 74 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“an ESPHome widget that talked to a window aircon via infrared commands”
“At least now I know who comes and goes, the exact time, a recoding of the entry”
“the combination of Home Assistant, ESPHome, and HA-MCP/CLI”
“HA/EspHome is overkill for this, but can be useful for the large catalog of pre built integrations.”
“ESPHome device are consistently faster and more reliable than any smart home tech I buy at 10x the price”
“Since it's running ESPHome you can easily verify everything it's doing.”
“There's a standard esphome component that just turns any esp32 with appropriate h/w into a BTLE proxy”
“HDMI breakout and a esp32 module flashed with esphome is another option.”
“I can inspect and modify the behaviors of everything with free and open tools”
“Maybe ESPHome has IR support but I used a micropython library”
“you could have skipped the custom firmware and just used ESPHome with a Button component”
“Support for a wide variety of common USB serial chips is already built into esphome.”
“I've successfully emulated remotes with ESPHome + xiao seeed + basic IR diode.”
“I've wired ESP32s into all my old heat pump units using ESPHome.”
“so you could do it all on the microcontroller pretty easily in a low-code way”
“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.”
“I can't stand all the bloat of Arduino/Platform.io/ESPHome”
“just by existing and being good, to create this little industry of no-bullshit products”
“emulate them with ESPHome to make them "smart" fully offline under my control.”
“It's quite easy to build one and deploy with esphome”
“Flash ESPHome and you can get live statistics in your Home Assistant dashboard”
“my 433 MHz transceiver does not seem to work well with esphome”
“come with open-source ESPHome firmware pre-installed, and they have all of the features I've described above”
“esphome is quite popular with people using HomeAssistant”
“ESPHome is the easiest way to integrate custom devices into your HomeAssistant with online updates, logs, and other functionality.”
“So your binaries get compiled quickly and you can still do the OTAs directly from your laptop.”
“Plus, once it recompiles it automagically uploads so just make your changes and forget about it”
“I used ESPHome to make a Bluetooth proxy, which solved that issue”
“The ESP is a beautiful piece of software, hence I highly recommend it.”
“The ESP stuff is a surprisingly heavy compile for a puny microcontroller.”
“DIY sensors based on esphome (quite easy if you like very basic tinkering with low voltage)”
“You can definitely override existing and create custom C++ components in ESPHome without too much hassle.”
“it's super cool that I can solder on a few wires to a DHT-11”
“ESPHome for example still will generally use the Arduino HAL/Framework”
“They do a periodic blinky-thing that is annoying until the HA rig comes back.”
“any supported BLE sensor [0] with a Bluetooth proxy ESPHome node should work.”
“it's so nice to throw together a yaml that pretty much does exactly what you want”
“BLE devices over an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy work surprisingly well too”
“With ESPHome you know exactly what the device is doing because you have 100% control over it.”
“I'm using ESPHome for everything that could be wall powered”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.