head to head · open source
Home Assistant vs homie-esp8266
Home Assistant has 91,982 GitHub stars, 39,200 forks, 3,527 open issues and last shipped today. homie-esp8266 has 1,374 stars, 304 forks, 89 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. Home Assistant leads on adoption by 6,594% (91,982 vs 1,374 stars). Home Assistant is written in Python under Apache-2.0; homie-esp8266 is written in HTML under MIT. Home Assistant has attracted 43% as many forks as stars, homie-esp8266 22%. Home Assistant was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (home-automation, iot, mqtt), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Home Assistant | homie-esp8266 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 92K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-03-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 39K | ⑂ 304 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Home Assistant if
- You weight community size — 92K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick homie-esp8266 if
- You want the homie-esp8266 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and homie-esp8266 fits your workflow better
About Home Assistant
Home Assistant Chat Status ================================================================================= Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Check out home assistant.io for a demo , installation instructions , tutorials and documentation . Featured integrations The system is built using a modular approach so support for other devices or actions can be implemented easily. See also the section on architecture and the section on creating your own components…
read the full Home Assistant overview →
About homie-esp8266
Homie for ESP8266 / ESP32 An Arduino for ESP8266 / ESP32 implementation of Homie, an MQTT convention for the IoT. This branch of Homie for ESP8266 implements Homie 3.0.1 and adds support for ESP32. Download The Git repository contains the development version of Homie for ESP8266. Stable releases are available on the releases page. Using with PlatformIO PlatformIO is an open source ecosystem for IoT development with cross platform build system, library manager and full support for Espressif ESP8266 development. It works on the popular host OS: Mac OS X, Windows, Linux 32/64, Linux ARM (like Raspberry Pi…
read the full homie-esp8266 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Home Assistant or homie-esp8266 more popular?
Home Assistant has 91,982 GitHub stars and homie-esp8266 has 1,374. Home Assistant has the larger community by that measure.
Are Home Assistant and homie-esp8266 free?
Both are open source. Home Assistant is licensed under Apache-2.0 and homie-esp8266 under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Home Assistant and homie-esp8266?
Home Assistant is written in Python and homie-esp8266 in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Home Assistant or homie-esp8266?
Choose Home Assistant if you want the larger community (91,982 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose homie-esp8266 if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.