Interested in voice controlling your Home Assistant with Amazon Alexa? You're in the right place! Setting an Alexa integration with your Home Assistant will allow you to control your lights, thermostats, TVs, alarms, and more with your voice or the Alexa app. It's magical! 🪄
There ares a few ways to Amazon Alexa or Amazon Echo working with Home Assistant. We have made a list of our top choices, the pros and cons of each, and will tell you how to set them up!
Homeway.io
Homeway is a community project with a mission to empower the Home Assistant community with free, secure, and private remote access to Home Assistant. Homeway also enables secure Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant support for Home Assistant.
Homeway is very easy to set up. Just install the Home Assistant add-on, and you're ready to go. The setup process takes less than 10 seconds; give it a try.
Pros
- $2.49 / month
- Easy to set up
- Lighting fast Alexa responses
- Includes unlimited Home Assistant remote access.
Cons
- No completely free options
Nabu Casa
Nabu Casa supports Amazon Alexa when you sign up for their cloud service. The setup is easy: create an account, log into your Home Assistant, and enable the Alexa assistant.
Pros
- Easy to set up
- Fast Alexa responses
- Includes remote access
- Supports Home Assistant
Cons
- $5.50 / month
- No completely free options
Manual Alexa Setup
If you already have public internet facing remote access to your Home Assistant, you can manually set up your own Alexa Skill. The setup process requires quite a lot of work, creating Amazon developer accounts, creating Amazon Web Services resources, and more. It's quite an involved process and require maintenance to keep it working, but it might be a good fit for you if you're techy!
Pros
- Completely free to set up and use
Cons
- Complex setup
- Requires maintenance to keep working
- Requires existing public internet remote access for Home Assistant.
Summary
Since the Alexa requires a secure Internet facing endpoint, most services require a low monthly fee.
Homeway is our top pick. Offering low-cost, secure, and private connections to Alexa. On top of that, you also get unlimited remote access to Home Assistant.
Nabu Casa is also a solid option, but it costs more to use.
Manually creating and setting up a Alexa Skill is complicated, but if you can set up and maintain the action, it's totally free!
We hope you find this post useful. We will keep this blog post updated with any service changes or new options, so check back soon!