Home Assistant Link (formerly Home Assistant Cloud): what changes in December, and do you still need it?
Short answer: Home Assistant Cloud becomes Home Assistant Link on December 2. Same service, new name, $6.50 a month in the US. I'm keeping my subscription.
On this page
Home Assistant Link is the new name for Home Assistant Cloud, the optional paid service Nabu Casa runs alongside Home Assistant. Nabu Casa announced the rename on October 2, 2026, and its pricing page says the switch happens on December 2, with the 2026.12 release.
Short version: the name is what changes. The 2026.10 release notes put it as “Same service, new name.” It costs $6.50 a month or $65 a year in the US, it still covers remote access, Alexa and Google Home, cloud speech processing and an off-site backup, and Home Assistant keeps running in your house without it. Nothing I read asks existing subscribers to do anything. I pay for it, and the rename doesn’t change that.
I intend to continue using it. I want to support Nabu Casa, and it’s been quite reliable for me, so I keep paying for it even though I also run Tailscale. The rest of this page comes from Nabu Casa’s announcement, its pricing page, its support docs and the last two release notes, all read on October 27, 2026.
What Home Assistant Link is
It’s a subscription that connects the Home Assistant you run at home to services outside it: your phone when you’re away, Alexa and Google Home, cloud speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and an off-site copy of your backup. It doesn’t host Home Assistant for you. Nabu Casa gives that confusion as one reason for the rename: some new users thought Home Assistant Cloud was a way to run Home Assistant in the cloud, and Nabu Casa says that has never been the case.
The other reason is the word itself. Nabu Casa says Home Assistant’s founder would tell audiences not to buy cloud-dependent products and then have to explain how Home Assistant Cloud was different. Nabu Casa has also dropped the word “cloud” from its logo.
What the rename changes, and what it doesn’t
| Item | Status, October 27, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Name | Home Assistant Cloud becomes Home Assistant Link on December 2, with 2026.12. The pricing page already uses the new name |
| The service and its features | ”Same service, new name,” per the 2026.10 release notes. The pricing page lists remote access, off-site backups, Alexa and Google Home, speech processing and media streaming under the Link name |
| Price | No change announced. The pricing page shows $6.50 a month and $65 a year in US dollars |
| Do you need it to run Home Assistant? | No. Nabu Casa says you don’t need Link to use the platform, and if you unsubscribe, your smart home keeps working |
Your nabu.casa remote URL | I couldn’t find anywhere that says whether it changes |
| The “Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa” listing you link in the Google Home app | I couldn’t find anywhere that says whether it’s renamed |
| Anything existing subscribers must do | Nothing in the announcement or the pricing page asks for any action |
What shipped around the rename
These are separate from the name and some are already live. Nabu Casa lists a new account page, a new settings page inside Home Assistant with a setup wizard, and a speech-to-text test in Labs. The 2026.9 release notes say that test uses a new provider, Soniox, can be turned on under Settings > System > Labs, and “may not be a permanent addition.”
Remote access moved to bare-metal servers that try to put you on the closest one, and 2026.10 added a latency checker that tests several servers at boot and picks the best connection. Nabu Casa also says new security features and account management tools are planned, without dates.
What you pay and what you get
| Plan | US price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $6.50 | Tax not included |
| Annual | $65.00 | Tax not included. Nabu Casa calls it “a year for the price of 10 months” |
| Free trial | $0 for 31 days | No card details required. If you don’t add a payment method by the end, you lose access |
The pricing page also offers CAD, EUR and GBP, and Nabu Casa’s support docs say the price depends on your location and currency. I only read the US price.
| Feature | What it does | What Nabu Casa’s docs say about privacy |
|---|---|---|
| Remote access | Reach your Home Assistant from outside the house with no port forwarding or VPN | End-to-end encrypted. The certificate comes from Let’s Encrypt and its private key is stored only on your Home Assistant system |
| Alexa and Google Home | Control the entities you expose from either assistant | The connection is always opened from your instance to Nabu Casa, and only encrypted messages pass between your instance and those services |
| Speech-to-text and text-to-speech | Cloud voice processing for your own Assist voice assistant | The 2026.9 notes say no logging, storing or training on your audio |
| Off-site backup | Keeps one copy of your latest backup | Always encrypted. The decryption key lives in your backup emergency kit, and Nabu Casa has no access to it. Stored with Cloudflare in West Europe |
| Webhooks | Lets outside services trigger automations | Not covered in what I read |
| Camera and media streaming | Improved camera streaming with WebRTC | Not covered in what I read |
| Support | A support team for Link features | Nabu Casa says it covers Link, not general Home Assistant questions |
The backup has limits worth knowing: only the latest backup is kept, older ones are deleted automatically, and the file has to be under 5 GB.
Nabu Casa says the majority of profits from subscriptions now fund the Open Home Foundation, and the pricing page lists “Funds the development of Home Assistant” as one of the things you pay for.
How it fits a local-first setup
Your automations run in the house either way. Link sits next to Home Assistant, not under it, so a cancelled subscription or an internet outage takes away the remote and voice-assistant features and leaves local control alone. My guide to devices that keep working when the internet dies covers what still runs.
Remote access is where the privacy claims matter most. Nabu Casa’s security page says your data stays encrypted from your Home Assistant to your device “even when passing through our servers,” and that this keeps Nabu Casa and other parties from seeing it. The code that requests the certificate is open source, and certificate transparency logs let you check that nobody else has been issued a certificate for your remote URL.
The same page is plain about the tradeoff: with remote access on, your Home Assistant login page is reachable from the internet. Nabu Casa’s advice is a strong password and two-factor authentication on every user account. Two smaller points from the limitations page:
- Trusted networks don’t apply over remote access, so remote visitors always get the login screen.
- Since 2026.9, Home Assistant sees each remote visitor’s real IP address, so IP banning now works with remote access. Bans don’t expire and a low threshold can lock you out, so read the page before you turn it on.
Nabu Casa also cuts off remote access for Home Assistant versions with known security problems, currently Core 2021.1.4 and older. Alexa, Google, text-to-speech and webhooks keep working during that block.
Alexa and Google Home are cloud assistants, so a voice command still goes through Amazon or Google before Link hands it to your house. If you want voice control that stays inside, see how to add voice control without Amazon or Google.
The alternatives
Remote access is the one piece with good free alternatives. Tailscale and Cloudflare Tunnel both reach Home Assistant without opening a port, and my Home Assistant Cloud vs Tailscale vs Cloudflare Tunnel comparison goes through the tradeoffs, so I won’t repeat them here. Neither replaces the rest of the bundle: the Alexa and Google linking, which Nabu Casa calls complex to set up yourself, the encrypted off-site backup and the cloud speech processing.
Who should keep it
| If you… | Keep Link? |
|---|---|
| Use Alexa or Google Home with Home Assistant | Yes. It’s the easy route; Nabu Casa calls doing it yourself complex |
| Want an off-site backup without running one yourself | Yes. Pair it with a local copy; my restore guide covers getting it back |
| Use Assist with cloud speech-to-text or text-to-speech | Yes, unless you’ve moved to a fully local voice setup |
| Only want remote access and already run Tailscale | Optional. You don’t need it, but the subscription funds the project. I run Tailscale and still pay for Link |
| Don’t want to pay for remote access | No. The comparison covers the free options and what each one costs you in setup |
| Are new to Home Assistant | Use the 31-day trial, then decide. My first-time setup guide is a good place to start |
I’ll update this page once 2026.12 ships and the rename is official, including whether the remote URL or the Google and Alexa listings change.