SmartThings puts its API behind a $4.99 plan, and the Home Assistant integration needs it after December 15

SmartThings posted on November 4, 2026 that the current SmartThings integration for Home Assistant “will no longer work” after December 15, 2026. A replacement integration is due in the Home Assistant release on December 2, and it runs on SmartThings’ new API Developer Plan, which the developer site lists at $4.99 a month for 100,000 API calls and up to 10 installed apps. Free access to the SmartThings cloud API for individual developers ended on November 3.

Short version: If anything in your Home Assistant comes in through the SmartThings integration, you have until December 15 to either pay $4.99 a month and re-add the integration, or move those devices off SmartThings. Zigbee, Z-Wave and Matter devices on a SmartThings hub can move to Home Assistant’s own radios and stop needing Samsung at all. Samsung appliances are the hard case: for most of them, SmartThings is the only route into Home Assistant.

What SmartThings announced

SmartThings’ steps, for anyone who pays: between December 2 and December 15, update Home Assistant, remove the existing SmartThings integration, add it again, and give it a 24-hour personal access token when asked. SmartThings says device IDs carry over, so automations should pick the devices back up.

It also says heavy use can hit the 100,000 call quota and “impact functionality”. That’s about 3,300 calls a day. I couldn’t find how many calls the new integration makes per device, so if you have a large SmartThings setup, watch the usage dashboard SmartThings points to in its Developer Center after you switch.

What stays local, and what doesn’t

The SmartThings integration in Home Assistant has always been a cloud integration. Every state change goes from your device to Samsung’s servers and back to Home Assistant. Nothing local is being taken away here. What’s new is that the cloud route now costs money.

SmartThings also announced, a day later, that its own app now talks to a SmartThings hub directly on your home network. That’s good news for people who stay in the SmartThings app. It does nothing for Home Assistant, which still goes through the cloud API.

What to do

If your SmartThings hub runs Zigbee or Z-Wave devices. This is the cheapest exit. Pair the devices to a coordinator Home Assistant controls, such as the Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 for Zigbee, which I run, or the Connect ZWA-2 for Z-Wave. They then work with no Samsung account and no subscription. Re-pairing means resetting each device and editing automations that point at the old entities, so start before December, not on the 14th. The Zigbee coordinator guide covers which stick to get.

If you have Matter devices on SmartThings. Matter lets one device join more than one controller, so you can add each one to Home Assistant’s Matter integration with a fresh pairing code from SmartThings, then remove it from SmartThings once it works. Once it is paired to Home Assistant, it stops depending on the SmartThings API.

If you have Samsung appliances or other Wi-Fi devices that only live in SmartThings. Here the choice is to pay or to lose them in Home Assistant. A Samsung washer, for example, only reaches Home Assistant through the SmartThings cloud. If all you want is a laundry-done alert, a smart plug with power monitoring on the washer gives you that locally, with no account. Samsung TVs have their own local Home Assistant integration that doesn’t use SmartThings.

If you decide to pay. Wait for the December 2 release, read its SmartThings notes, then follow the remove-and-re-add steps above before December 15.

Does this change my picks?

It hardens one. The Samsung washer was already listed here as a cloud-only pick for people who are on SmartThings anyway, and it now comes with about $60 a year attached if you want it in Home Assistant. The case I make in why I moved to Home Assistant and in Home Assistant vs Hubitat is the same as before: a device that only reaches your automations through someone else’s cloud can be priced or switched off at that company’s choosing, and this is what that looks like.