Podbit · This Week in Tech (Audio)
Samsung will now charge $4.99 a month to access the SmartThings API. For the 200,000+ Home Assistant users who rely on it to control their Zigbee and Z-Wave devices, this is either a cash grab or a calculated move to kill off the legacy tinkerer community and push everyone onto Samsung's cloud-first smart home platform.
Where this was said
At 2:06:05 · chapter starts 2:03:40
Samsung announced that developers accessing the SmartThings API will be charged $4.99 per month — a move that Jennifer Pattison Tuohy says will hit approximately 200,000 ordinary Home Assistant users who rely on SmartThings hubs to run legacy Zigbee and Z-Wave devices, not just professional developers. Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen directly messaged Jennifer with this estimate. The anger in the smart home community is compounded by the history of SmartThings: it was one of the original open smart home hubs, beloved by tinkerers for its flexibility. After Samsung acquired it, the platform was gradually repositioned away from local, open protocols toward a cloud-dependent, AI-driven model. The latest SmartThings hub no longer includes a Z-Wave radio. Jennifer reads the API fee as a deliberate move to accelerate the exit of the legacy community and reposition SmartThings entirely around Samsung's appliance ecosystem, where the smart home hub lives in your TV or fridge rather than a dedicated box. Leo and Jennifer debate the core tension in smart home design: local control is more secure, resilient, and privacy-preserving, but cloud architecture is more convenient and accessible to mainstream users.
Samsung announced it will charge developers $4.99 a month to access the SmartThings API, angering the large community of Home Assistant users.
Home Assistant creator Paulus Schoutsen estimated that around 200,000 individual users — not developers — will be affected by the new SmartThings API fee.
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