Home Assistant Cloud Is Now Called Home Assistant Link
Nabu Casa announced that Home Assistant Cloud is being renamed Home Assistant Link. It's more than a new name: it's a way to make clear what the service actually does and how it differs from Big Tech clouds. Here's what's changing and why it matters if your home runs on Home Assistant.
Why the "Cloud" name no longer fit
According to Nabu Casa, the word "cloud" has become associated with ever-increasing subscription prices, outages and data harvesting. That's the exact opposite of what Home Assistant stands for.
The name also caused confusion: some new users thought Home Assistant Cloud was a way to run Home Assistant in the cloud, which was never the case. The project believes Home Assistant should always run locally, in your home. Even Paulus, founder of Home Assistant, would tell audiences not to buy products that require the cloud to work, then have to explain why Home Assistant Cloud was different despite its name.
Where the service comes from
Home Assistant began with a group of core developers working nights and weekends alongside their regular jobs. To avoid the burnout that has ended many open source projects, Nabu Casa was founded in 2018 and Home Assistant Cloud was created.
The goal was twofold: solve a real problem, like reaching your Home Assistant when you're away from home without spending a weekend on it, and make development sustainable. Today the majority of subscription profits fund the Open Home Foundation, supporting everyone working on Home Assistant, from salaried staff to volunteers.
Link vs. a Big Tech cloud
Nabu Casa draws clear lines between Home Assistant Link and a typical cloud service:
Optional vs. required: your smart home still works without Link, lights and all. With many clouds, all or most features stop working without it.
No lock-in vs. walled garden: you can use this service or someone else's, and you'll never be stuck with its outages or price increases.
Private data vs. monetized data: your data is yours. Big Tech uses it for ads and AI training, and sometimes sells it to third parties.
Funds a nonprofit vs. investors: most profits go to the Open Home Foundation, not shareholders.
Your home keeps working even if you don't pay
It's been clear from the start that you don't need Link to use Home Assistant. Without it, you miss out on some extras, but that's all they are: extras. And if you subscribe and later cancel, your smart home keeps working.
That's a key difference from devices that become paperweights when the manufacturer drops support: thermostats that can't be scheduled or cameras that can't detect motion, creating a mountain of e-waste.
Privacy: encrypted data, and you hold the key
When you use Home Assistant Link, your data is encrypted and only you have the key. Neither Nabu Casa nor the Open Home Foundation want your data, and they work to never even have the opportunity to see it.
The idea is technology that serves people: data that's yours, and a smart home that answers to you, not corporate shareholders.
What Link offers in practice
Link is aimed at people who'd like a simpler approach than a DIY setup. Some examples:
Alexa and Google Home integration without the hassle of setting it up yourself.
Online speech-to-text, which tends to be faster, supports more languages and is more reliable than self-hosted alternatives.
Online backups, so your setup is always recoverable while staying private.
Support from real humans if you run into trouble with a feature. There's also a new account page to see everything at a glance.
What it means for your setup
If you already use Home Assistant Cloud, what changes is the name: the service keeps its optional, private, lock-in free approach. If you're thinking about automating your home, it's a good reminder of why a local platform like Home Assistant makes sense: you stay in control, and online services add convenience without becoming essential.
At EgeaINC we install and configure Home Assistant and help you decide whether Link makes sense for how you use your home.