Top Alternatives to Google Home: Smart Home Platforms for People Who Want Options

Google Home is a solid smart home platform, especially if you're already living in the Google ecosystem. But there are plenty of reasons someone might want to look elsewhere. Privacy concerns, wanting local control, frustration with Google's habit of discontinuing products, or simply preferring a different approach.

Here are the best alternatives to Google Home for managing your smart home.

Amazon Alexa

Alexa is the most direct alternative to Google Home. It has the largest device compatibility list of any voice assistant platform, a massive Skills library, and Echo hardware at every price point. The routine builder is capable, and Amazon keeps adding features.

Alexa handles smart home control marginally better than Google in some areas, particularly with complex routines and device grouping. Google Assistant is better at answering general knowledge questions and handling follow-up queries. The ecosystems are roughly equal for most smart home tasks.

The Alexa app has improved significantly and device setup is generally painless. If you're leaving Google because of device support, Alexa has you covered.

Apple HomeKit

If privacy is driving your switch from Google, HomeKit deserves serious consideration. All processing happens locally. Video from HomeKit Secure Video cameras is encrypted end-to-end. Apple doesn't use your smart home data for advertising or profiling.

The device selection is smaller than Google or Amazon, and Siri isn't as capable a general assistant as Google Assistant. But the things HomeKit does, it does with a level of polish and privacy that neither Google nor Amazon can match. If your household runs on iPhones and Macs, everything just clicks together.

HomeBridge can fill gaps in device support by bringing non-HomeKit devices into the fold.

Home Assistant

Home Assistant is the open-source, self-hosted alternative that gives you control of everything. It runs on your own hardware, processes everything locally, and supports over 2,000 integrations. If a device exists, Home Assistant probably supports it.

The dashboard is fully customizable. The automation engine is powerful. And with the companion app, you get presence detection and notifications on your phone. The trade-off is setup time and a learning curve that's steeper than any commercial platform.

For people leaving Google because they don't trust cloud services with their home data, Home Assistant is the gold standard. Nothing leaves your network unless you explicitly configure it to.

You can even expose Home Assistant devices to Google Home, Alexa, or HomeKit, giving you voice control while keeping the brains local.

Samsung SmartThings

SmartThings offers a polished app experience, built-in Zigbee and Z-Wave support through its hub, and strong Matter compatibility. Samsung has been positioning it as the hub for their entire device ecosystem, tying together TVs, appliances, phones, and third-party smart home devices.

The shift to edge processing means more reliability since your automations run on the hub even if internet goes down. For people who want a commercial platform that's less tied to a voice assistant and more focused on being a device hub, SmartThings fills that role well.

Hubitat Elevation

Hubitat targets the gap between SmartThings (easy but cloud-dependent) and Home Assistant (powerful but complex). It's a local-processing hub with built-in Zigbee and Z-Wave radios. Everything runs on the hub, no cloud required for automations.

The community is smaller but enthusiastic, and there's a library of community-built apps and drivers. If you want Home Assistant's local philosophy in a more out-of-the-box package, Hubitat is the closest thing.

The web interface is functional rather than sleek, and the mobile app is basic. But it works, and it works locally.

Homey

Homey is a European smart home controller that supports Zigbee, Z-Wave, WiFi, Bluetooth, infrared, and 433MHz RF from a single device. That radio versatility means it can control almost anything, including legacy devices that most modern hubs ignore.

The Homey app is well-designed with a visual flow editor for automations that's intuitive even for non-technical users. It's more polished than Hubitat but less flexible than Home Assistant. For someone who wants broad compatibility without diving into YAML files, Homey hits a nice middle ground.

Availability is mostly in Europe, though it's expanding.

The Voice Assistant Question

One thing worth thinking about: do you actually need a voice assistant platform, or do you need a smart home platform? They're not the same thing.

Google Home's identity is tied to Google Assistant. If you mainly use your smart home through voice, you might want Alexa or HomeKit as your replacement. But if you mainly control things through an app, schedules, and automations, then platforms like Home Assistant, SmartThings, or Hubitat might be better fits even without a built-in voice assistant.

Many people run Home Assistant or Hubitat as the brains and keep a few Google or Alexa speakers around just for voice commands. You don't have to pick just one platform.

Making the Switch

Switching smart home platforms used to mean replacing every device. Matter changes that equation significantly. Matter-compatible devices work across Google, Amazon, Apple, SmartThings, and Home Assistant. So if you buy Matter devices going forward, you're free to switch platforms without replacing hardware.

The best time to start planning a switch is now, while Matter is becoming standard. The worst time is after Google inevitably sunsets another product you depend on.