Home Assistant Yellow vs Green vs Pi 5 for 2026

If you’re running Home Assistant locally in 2026, three pieces of hardware come up most often: the Home Assistant Green, the Home Assistant Yellow, and the Raspberry Pi 5. They sit at different points on price, performance, and how much assembly you do yourself. Here’s the honest breakdown, including which ones have radios built in, because that detail trips a lot of people up.

1. Home Assistant Green: The Easy, Low-Cost Entry Point

The Green is the lowest-tier, cheapest of the three, and that’s a feature, not a knock. It’s a sealed appliance built around a Rockchip RK3566 (quad-core Cortex-A55 at 1.8 GHz) with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC storage. You plug in Ethernet and power, run the setup wizard, and you’re going. It lists for about $199.

The one thing to understand: the Green has no built-in radio. It can’t talk to Zigbee or Z-Wave devices on its own. You add a USB coordinator, such as the Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 for Zigbee and Thread (roughly $49; it succeeds the now-discontinued ZBT-1, which still works if you already own one), plus a separate USB stick if you need Z-Wave. Wi-Fi and Matter-over-Wi-Fi devices work without any dongle.

The Green is the right pick if you want the simplest possible start and don’t mind plugging a small USB stick into the back for Zigbee.

2. Home Assistant Yellow: Integrated Radio, but Discontinued

Important context first: Nabu Casa ended production of the Yellow in October 2025. It still gets software support and you may find remaining stock, but it’s no longer being made.

The Yellow is the more enthusiast-oriented box. It’s built around a Raspberry Pi Compute Module (CM4 or CM5, which you can upgrade), giving you flexible performance. It has an M.2 NVMe slot for fast SSD storage, GPIO headers, and, crucially, a built-in Zigbee/Thread radio, so Zigbee and Thread work out of the box without a USB dongle. A PoE variant lets one Ethernet cable supply both power and network. Z-Wave still requires a separate USB stick.

So the Yellow’s appeal over the Green is the integrated radio and NVMe storage in one tidy unit. The downsides in 2026 are that it’s end-of-life, it costs more, and you may need to supply a Compute Module on top.

3. Raspberry Pi 5: The Most Powerful, Most DIY

The Raspberry Pi 5 is the performance choice. It uses a Broadcom BCM2712 (quad-core Cortex-A76 at 2.4 GHz), which is meaningfully faster than anything in the Green or a CM4-based Yellow, and it comes in RAM options up to 16 GB. It has a microSD slot and a PCIe 2.0 interface, so with an NVMe HAT you can boot from a fast SSD.

Like the Green, the Pi 5 has no built-in smart-home radio. You supply the case, power supply, storage, and a USB Zigbee/Thread coordinator (and a Z-Wave stick if needed). In exchange you get the most headroom for large setups, add-ons, and anything CPU-heavy.

The Pi 5 is the pick for people who want maximum performance and flexibility and are comfortable assembling the pieces.

4. Choosing the Right Option for Your Setup

A simple way to decide:

• Want the cheapest, simplest start and don’t mind a USB Zigbee stick? Get the Green (~$199) plus a Zigbee coordinator (the current Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2; its predecessor the ZBT-1 is discontinued but still supported).
• Want built-in Zigbee/Thread, NVMe, and PoE in one box, and can find one at a fair price? The Yellow still delivers that, just remember it’s discontinued.
• Want the most performance and don’t mind DIY assembly? The Raspberry Pi 5 (up to 16 GB RAM, NVMe via PCIe) is the strongest, plus a USB radio coordinator.

The radio situation is the thing to plan for: only the Yellow has Zigbee/Thread built in. The Green and the Pi 5 both need a USB coordinator, and none of the three include Z-Wave, so any Z-Wave setup needs a separate stick regardless of which you choose.

Quick Verdict

For most people starting out in 2026, the Home Assistant Green is the sensible buy: cheap, sealed, supported, and a USB coordinator away from full Zigbee support. The Raspberry Pi 5 is the choice when you want serious performance and flexibility and don’t mind building it. The Home Assistant Yellow is still a lovely all-in-one with its integrated radio and NVMe, but its discontinued status means you should only choose it if you specifically want those features and can get remaining stock at a reasonable price.