Best Hardware for Home Assistant in 2026: Green vs Pi 5 vs Mini PC vs NUC
So you've decided to run Home Assistant. Now comes the fun part: figuring out what to run it on. The options range from a $100 plug-and-play box to repurposed office computers, and honestly, they all work. The real question is which one fits your situation.
I've tested all the major options over the years, and here's what I've learned about each one.
The Options at a Glance
| Hardware | Price | Setup | Performance | Power Draw | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HA Green | $99-120 | Plug and play | Basic | 2-6W | Getting started |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | $80-150 | Some assembly | Good | 5-8W | Tinkerers |
| Mini PC (N100) | $100-250 | Install OS | Very good | 6-15W | Cameras & add-ons |
| Intel/ASUS NUC | $250-600+ | Install OS | Overkill | 15-30W | Future-proofing |
Home Assistant Green
The Home Assistant Green is what Nabu Casa (the company behind Home Assistant) sells as their official starter hardware. It's a small fanless box with everything pre-installed. You plug in ethernet and power, and five minutes later you're setting up your first automation.
Under the hood, it's running a Rockchip RK3566 with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage. Nothing fancy, but enough for a typical smart home.
What's good about it
The setup experience is genuinely painless. There's no flashing SD cards, no BIOS settings, no terminal commands. It just works. Updates happen automatically. If something breaks, Nabu Casa supports it directly.
Power consumption hovers around 2 watts at idle. That's maybe $5 a year in electricity.
What's not so good
You can't upgrade anything. The RAM is soldered, the storage is fixed, and there's no way to add Zigbee or Z-Wave internally. If you want those protocols, you're plugging in USB dongles.
Performance-wise, it handles basic automation and a few dozen devices without complaint. But if you start adding resource-heavy stuff like Frigate for camera AI detection, it'll struggle.
Who should buy it
If you're not sure Home Assistant is for you and just want to try it out, the Green makes sense. Spend the $100, play with it for a few months, and if you get hooked, you can always move to something more powerful later. Your configuration migrates easily.
Raspberry Pi 5
The Pi has been the default Home Assistant hardware for years. The Pi 5 brought a significant speed bump—it idles at about 2% CPU where the Pi 4 sat around 6%, and backups that took over two minutes now finish in 30 seconds.
The specs: quad-core Cortex-A76 at 2.4 GHz, either 4GB or 8GB of RAM, and PCIe support for NVMe storage.
What's good about it
Community support is unmatched. Whatever problem you run into, someone's already solved it and posted about it. There are tutorials for everything.
The Pi is also genuinely expandable. HATs let you add NVMe storage, PoE power, and various radios. GPIO pins mean you can wire up custom sensors or buttons if you're into that sort of thing.
Cost-wise, you're looking at around $60 for the board. Add a case, power supply, and NVMe HAT with SSD, and you're at $100-150 total.
What's not so good
Running Home Assistant on an SD card is asking for trouble. The constant database writes will kill the card eventually. You really need to add an NVMe HAT, which adds cost and complexity.
For heavier workloads—especially camera stuff—the Pi 5 starts to show its limits. It'll handle a couple of cameras, but don't expect to run Frigate with AI detection on six IP cameras.
Who should buy it
The Pi makes sense if you like building things and don't mind spending an afternoon getting everything set up right. The 4GB model handles 30-80 devices comfortably. If you're already in the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, it's a natural choice.
Mini PCs with Intel N100
Here's where things get interesting. These generic mini PCs—brands like Beelink, TRIGKEY, GMKtec—have gotten surprisingly good and surprisingly cheap. A complete system with 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD runs about $150-200.
The N100 is Intel's budget chip, but "budget" is relative. It's roughly four times faster than a Raspberry Pi 5 in real-world Home Assistant usage.
What's good about it
The performance headroom is the main draw. Frigate handles 4-6 cameras without breaking a sweat. Add a Coral USB TPU and inference times drop to under 10ms. Users running 10 cameras report CPU usage around 45%—plenty of room to spare.
You also get x86 compatibility, which means more software options. Some add-ons only run on x86. Dual ethernet ports are common, handy if you want to put IoT devices on a separate network.
Power draw stays reasonable: 6-8 watts at idle, maybe 15 under load. That's $10-20 a year.
What's not so good
Build quality varies. Some of these brands are better than others, and the cheap ones can feel cheap. Read reviews before buying.
The N100 only supports single-channel RAM, which limits memory bandwidth. In practice this doesn't matter much for Home Assistant, but it's there.
No GPIO pins, so if you wanted to wire up physical buttons or sensors directly, you're out of luck.
Who should buy it
If you're running cameras with Frigate, this is probably what you want. The price-to-performance ratio is hard to beat. It's also a solid choice if you just want something that'll handle whatever you throw at it for the next five years.
Intel NUC (Now ASUS NUC)
Intel sold the NUC line to ASUS in 2023, so these are now "ASUS NUCs." They've long been the premium choice for home servers—compact, well-built, and powerful.
Current models range from Core i3 chips up to Core i7 or i9. RAM goes up to 64GB. You can fit multiple storage drives. These are serious machines in small packages.
What's good about it
Build quality is a step above the generic mini PCs. Cooling is better engineered. They're designed to run 24/7 for years.
If you're doing something demanding—say, running Frigate on 8-12 cameras with AI detection, plus a bunch of other containers—a NUC won't flinch. You're also getting dual-channel RAM and Thunderbolt connectivity on most models.
What's not so good
The price premium is significant. You're paying $300-600 for what is, functionally, a mini PC. The N100 boxes do 80% of the job at 30% of the price.
Power consumption is higher too—15-30 watts depending on the model. That's $25-50 a year in electricity, not huge but not nothing either.
Many NUCs ship as barebones units, meaning you still need to buy RAM and storage separately. Factor that into the total cost.
Who should buy it
Honestly, most people don't need a NUC. But if you're building something that needs to be rock-solid reliable, or if you're planning to run a lot more than just Home Assistant on this box, the extra investment might be worth it. They're also good if you just want to buy something nice and not think about it for a decade.
The Wildcard: Refurbished Business PCs
Before you drop $400 on a new NUC, check eBay for refurbished Dell OptiPlex Micro, HP EliteDesk Mini, or Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny units. These are the mini PCs that corporations buy by the thousands and then dump after their lease is up.
You can find Core i5 or i7 machines with 8-16GB RAM and an SSD for $80-150. That's NUC-level performance at N100 prices, sometimes less.
The downside: they're a few years old, so power efficiency isn't quite as good as modern chips. But for a home server that runs 24/7, the performance-per-dollar is hard to argue with.
What About Power Costs?
Since this thing runs around the clock, electricity matters. Here's what you're looking at annually, assuming average US rates of $0.15/kWh:
| Device | Typical Draw | Yearly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| HA Green | 2-6W | $3-8 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 5-8W | $7-11 |
| Mini PC (N100) | 6-15W | $8-20 |
| Intel NUC | 15-30W | $20-39 |
| Refurbished i5/i7 | 15-35W | $20-46 |
None of these will break the bank, but if you're paying California electricity rates, the difference between a Green and a NUC starts to add up.
So What Should You Actually Buy?
Just want to try Home Assistant? Get the Home Assistant Green. It's $100, it works out of the box, and you can upgrade later if you need to.
Comfortable with some setup and want flexibility? A Raspberry Pi 5 with an NVMe HAT is a solid choice around $120-150. Just don't cheap out on the storage.
Running cameras or lots of add-ons? An N100 mini PC gives you way more headroom for similar money. The Beelink Mini S12 Pro is a popular choice.
Want NUC-level performance without NUC prices? Hunt for a refurbished Dell OptiPlex Micro or HP EliteDesk on eBay. Seriously, $100 gets you a lot of computer.
Building something mission-critical or just want the best? A current ASUS NUC with an i5 or i7 will handle anything you throw at it and probably outlast your interest in smart home stuff.
One More Thing
Whatever you pick, your Home Assistant configuration isn't locked to that hardware. Moving from a Pi to a mini PC later takes maybe an hour if you've got good backups. So don't overthink it—buy something reasonable, start automating, and upgrade when you actually need to.