Do you need a smart home hub? It depends on four things
Not on how many devices you own, and not on whether they say Matter on the box.
Why "how many devices" is the wrong question#
The common advice is that you need a hub once you pass some number of devices. That is not how it works. A house with forty Wi-Fi bulbs needs no hub. A house with one Zigbee button needs one. A hub is not a size threshold, it is four separate capabilities, and they do not come from the same box.
Work through the questions in order. The first is a hard constraint. The other three are choices.
Question 1: which radios do your devices use?#
This is physics, not preference. Your phone has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It has no Zigbee radio, no Z-Wave radio and no 802.15.4 radio for Thread. Anything speaking one of those needs hardware in your house that speaks it too.
| What you own | Hub needed? | What specifically |
|---|---|---|
| Wi-Fi devices with vendor apps | No | Your router is the hub, for better and worse |
| Matter over Wi-Fi or Ethernet | No radio hub | A controller is still needed for automations and remote access |
| Matter over Thread | Yes, effectively | A Thread border router, which is usually built into a hub or speaker |
| Zigbee | Yes | A coordinator: SmartThings, Hubitat, Homey, a Home Assistant dongle, a Hue Bridge for Hue |
| Z-Wave | Yes, always | Only Home Assistant, Hubitat, Homey and Aeotec hubs carry the radio |
| Lutron, older Hue, other vendor radios | Yes | The vendor's own bridge, no substitute exists |
Two details cost people money here.
First, Thread. A Thread device is not reachable from your LAN without a border router, and a border router is not a hub: it routes IPv6 between the mesh and your network and registers services so controllers can find devices. It adds nothing to your account. It feels like a hub only because vendors build border routers into hubs, speakers and streamers, so you get the radio as a side effect. Hub, bridge, controller, border router separates the roles.
Second, Z-Wave. There is no standalone Z-Wave to Matter bridge dongle. As of September 2026 the hub is the bridge, so Z-Wave ownership forces you into Home Assistant, Hubitat, Homey or an Aeotec SmartThings hub. Decide that before you buy the devices.
Question 2: do your automations have to run without the internet?#
Every automation executes somewhere, and where decides what happens during an outage. Local versus cloud control maps the five places a command can be processed. The short version for hubs:
| Platform | Where automations run | What survives an outage |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Home | On the home hub | Automations and LAN control keep running. Siri, remote access and iCloud sharing stop |
| Google Home | Cloud, with local Matter control for lights, plugs and switches only | Basic on and off for some devices. Routines and all Gemini voice stop |
| Amazon Alexa | Cloud | Very little. Voice has gone to the cloud with no opt-out since March 2025 |
| SmartThings | Mixed, cloud coordination | Some local device control, but the platform assumes connectivity |
| Home Assistant | Locally, always | Everything, including a fully local voice pipeline if you set one up |
| Hubitat | Locally, in milliseconds | Everything. No subscription and no cloud in the automation path |
| Homey Pro | Flows run locally on the box | Flows continue, though the mobile app is reported to need internet to reauthorize periodically |
Google's global outage on 18 August 2026 lasted about twelve hours and left Nest hubs unresponsive. That is the concrete version of this argument: not an objection to the cloud in principle, just twelve hours of a house that did not respond.
The nuance people miss is that this question is about the hub's software, not its radios. A Nest Hub has a Thread radio and still cannot run your routines offline. A Hubitat has no Thread radio and runs everything offline.
Question 3: do you need several brands in one app?#
Matter already does some of this without a hub. A Matter device can be commissioned into several fabrics at once, so one plug answers Apple Home, Alexa and Home Assistant simultaneously. That is multi-admin, and it makes "one app" a weaker argument for a hub than it was in 2022.
Where it still fails:
- Devices that are not Matter. Zigbee, Z-Wave, infrared, 433 MHz and cloud-only brands reach Matter only through a bridge, which is a hub doing translation.
- Features that do not survive translation. A bridge converts a vendor's model into Matter's and drops whatever does not map. Govee and Nanoleaf lighting effects reduce to on, off, dim and a solid color. See what you lose through a Matter bridge.
- Version mismatch. Platforms sit on different Matter versions, so one app shows a device fully and another shows it half-working.
Homey Pro's Matter Bridge app is the cleanest legacy on-ramp available in 2026: it turns Zigbee, Z-Wave, infrared, Bluetooth, 433 MHz and cloud devices into Matter accessories for Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings and Home Assistant. That is one $449 hub buying consistency across every other app in the house.
Question 4: do you care about surviving a vendor shutdown?#
Belkin shut down Wemo on 31 January 2026. The app and cloud went, taking the Alexa and Google integrations with them. The only devices that survived were the ones already paired to Apple HomeKit before that date, and they survived because control was local and no server had to agree.
That is the whole argument in one example. Other recent cases: Google cut off the Nest Learning Thermostat 1st and 2nd generation on 25 October 2025, and Apple retired the legacy HomeKit architecture on 10 February 2026, so households that never migrated lost automations and shared access.
A hub helps only if it is the thing doing the work. One that relays your command to a vendor cloud has the same exposure as no hub at all. What actually reduces exposure:
- Standards-based radios. Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread and Matter devices can be re-paired to different software later. A cloud-only Wi-Fi device cannot.
- A local execution engine, with automations stored on hardware you own.
- Exportable configuration. You can back up and move a Home Assistant or Hubitat setup. You cannot export an Alexa routine.
- More than one path. Multi-admin means a device answers two controllers, so one vendor's decision does not orphan it.
A live example worth watching: Samsung is ending free SmartThings API access in October 2026, moving individual developers to a $4.99 a month Personal Plan. Home Assistant's SmartThings integration falls under that plan, and Home Assistant has not said how it will handle it. Nothing has broken, but it is the shape of change that strands people. When a smart home company shuts down covers the warning signs.
The decision table#
| If this describes you | Hub? | Buy | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wi-Fi bulbs and plugs, one brand, one app, happy | No | Nothing | You already have a hub. It is your router |
| Anything Matter over Thread | Yes, a border router | HomePod mini ($129), Google Home Speaker ($99.99), Echo Dot Max ($99.99) or SmartThings Station | Thread needs an 802.15.4 radio with a LAN connection |
| Existing Zigbee or Hue gear | Yes | Hue Bridge for Hue, otherwise SmartThings, Hubitat, Homey or a Home Assistant ZBT-2 ($49) | Your phone has no Zigbee radio |
| Any Z-Wave, or locks at range | Yes | Hubitat C-8 Pro ($184.95), Home Assistant plus ZWA-2 ($69), Homey Pro, or Aeotec | Only these carry the 908.42 MHz radio |
| Automations that must not fail | Yes, a local one | Hubitat or Home Assistant. Apple Home if the logic is simple | Rules execute on hardware in your house |
| Mixed brands, want one app | Maybe | Matter multi-admin first, a bridging hub only for what Matter cannot reach | Do not buy a hub for a problem Matter already solves |
| Buying against vendor shutdowns | Yes | Home Assistant or Hubitat, plus standards-based devices | Local execution plus exportable configuration |
The case against a hub#
Hubs are not free, and the price is the smallest part of the cost.
- Another failure point. One box now sits between you and every Zigbee or Z-Wave device you own. Losing it means re-pairing everything unless you have a backup, and Z-Wave re-pairing means walking to each device.
- Maintenance. Home Assistant expects you to update it. Hubitat expects you to learn its rule engine. Neither is a beginner product.
- Lock-in of a different kind. A Zigbee network is bound to the coordinator that formed it, so moving hubs later is a migration, not a swap.
- Price movement. Enthusiast hardware got more expensive in 2026: Home Assistant Green went from $99 to $199, Homey Pro to $449 and the HomePod mini to $129, with vendors citing memory and storage costs.
The order to buy in#
Devices first, then the hub they imply. The reverse order is how people end up with a $449 box controlling four bulbs, or a $99.99 speaker that cannot reach the Z-Wave lock they bought the same week. Which radio for which job settles the radio first.
Do I need a hub for Matter?
Not for Matter over Wi-Fi or Ethernet, which your phone can commission directly. You do need one for Matter over Thread, because a Thread border router has to route between the mesh and your LAN. You also need a controller that stays powered if you want automations or remote access, and on most platforms that controller is a hub.
Can I just use an Echo or a Nest speaker as my hub?
Sometimes. Echo Dot and Echo Pop have no hub radios at all. Echo Dot Max, Echo Hub, Echo Studio, Echo 4th gen and larger Echo Show models do, with Zigbee on specific models only. Nest Mini and Nest Audio are Matter hubs without Thread radios. All of them run automations in the cloud, so they answer question 1 and fail question 2.
What happens to my hub when the internet goes down?
It depends on the hub, not on the outage. Apple Home, Hubitat, Home Assistant and Homey keep executing automations locally. Google Home keeps local Matter control for lights, plugs and switches only, and Alexa keeps very little. What still works when the internet goes down has the device-by-device version.
Is a Wi-Fi router with Thread built in enough?
It gives you a border router, which is the hard part of Thread coverage, and eero and Nest Wifi Pro both do it well. It does not give you an automation engine or a Zigbee radio. Treat a Thread router as one component of a hub, not as the hub.
Do I need a hub for a smart lock?
For a Matter over Thread lock, yes, in the form of a border router. For a Z-Wave lock, yes, and only four platforms qualify. For a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth lock, no, though a bridge is usually what makes it work remotely. Locks are where local execution matters most, so answer question 2 first. See smart locks and the Aliro standard.
Can I start without a hub and add one later?
Yes, and it is often the right sequence. Wi-Fi and Matter over Wi-Fi devices carry over to whatever hub you buy later. The purchases that do not carry over are cloud-only Wi-Fi devices from small brands, because if the vendor goes, they go. Treat those as consumable.
Primary sources
Specification and vendor documentation we checked while writing this page. Where a claim depends on firmware behaviour rather than a published spec, the page says so inline.