SmartThings' $4.99 Developer Plan: what changes for Home Assistant users and other API apps on December 15

Samsung's SmartThings platform started selling paid plans for its cloud API on November 4, 2026, and from December 15 Home Assistant's SmartThings integration will need one. After that date, SmartThings says, the current Home Assistant integration will no longer work with SmartThings, and API apps whose owners have not chosen a paid plan will have their keys deactivated. For individuals, the option is the Developer Plan, listed at $4.99 a month in the US before tax. This guide sets out what SmartThings says remains free, what the plan includes and which dates matter, based on SmartThings' announcements, its Developer Center plan page and Home Assistant's documentation, all read on November 11, 2026.

What stays free, and what now costs money

The charge covers direct calls to SmartThings' cloud API made through OAuth apps, such as those individual developers build for custom dashboards, outside automation platforms and scripts. When it announced the change on June 23, 2026, SmartThings said people who use the SmartThings app with Works with SmartThings (WWST) partner devices would not be affected. Its October 30 blog post splits the platform like this:

Some tools fall on both sides. SmartThings says Rules can still be used in its command-line interface (CLI), with personal access tokens (PATs), in its Advanced Web App and in the mobile app, but running Rules through OAuth requires a paid plan. The CLI stays free for device profiles, Edge driver packaging and certification work, while its commands for creating and managing cloud API apps need a plan. SmartThings describes PATs as intended for temporary testing and lightweight scripts, not for ongoing integrations.

What the Developer Plan includes

SmartThings' plan page lists the Developer Plan at $4.99 a month and says US prices are shown without applicable tax. The plan allows 100,000 API calls a month in total and up to 10 installed apps, is limited to personal household locations, and includes near real-time events through Server-Sent Events (SSE) and webhooks, standard support and an API usage dashboard. According to the October 30 post, the subscription is attached to the developer account, not to a hub or a home, so several homes or hubs can run under one plan if their combined traffic stays within its limits. At the listed price the plan costs $59.88 a year before tax, by our arithmetic. Businesses are offered a separate plan priced by usage, with volume tiers starting at 1 million calls a month, and are asked to contact SmartThings for prices.

The Developer Plan is not on sale everywhere. SmartThings' plan page says it is available in select countries and refers readers to its FAQ for the full list. The list is not in the page's visible text, but a setting for the FAQ's supported countries in the page's code, read on November 11, 2026, named nine: the United States, Korea, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. SmartThings says availability may expand over time, and that the December 15 date still applies to all Home Assistant users, including those in countries where the plan is not available, and refers them to its developer support.

Home Assistant is the integration SmartThings singles out, but the October 30 post says the dates apply to all API Access Apps. That includes OAuth apps that individuals use to bring SmartThings into their own dashboards, other automation platforms or scripts.

The dates for Home Assistant users

SmartThings' November 4 post says a Home Assistant user will need an active Developer Plan and a 24-hour personal access token. The steps it gives, for the period from December 2 to December 15, are to update Home Assistant, remove the existing SmartThings integration, add it again and follow the setup prompts; the token is requested so that a custom OAuth app can be loaded to the user's account. SmartThings says automations will survive, because the device IDs stored in them fill in again once the integration is re-added. It acknowledges that the gap between the new release and the cutoff is short, and says it has “built in two weeks for you to switch” while the old integration keeps running.

The call limit is part of the picture. SmartThings says the Home Assistant integration uses SSE and is efficient in how it calls SmartThings, but that a user who reaches the monthly limit may find the integration affected, and it asks users to keep an eye on usage in the Developer Center Console.

How the timetable moved

The dates are later than first announced. In June, SmartThings said it would introduce a $4.99 monthly plan for non-commercial individual developers, aimed for October 2026, and keep free access through the third quarter. The October 30 post gave the November 4 launch and the December 15 cutoff. Home Assistant's own SmartThings documentation page, which showed version 2026.11.1 when we read it on November 11, 2026, still warned of a change starting in October 2026 and called the paid tier a Personal Plan; SmartThings' later posts call it the Developer Plan. SmartThings also says plan details, pricing and availability are subject to change.

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