A New Enhanced SmartThings API Experience

Announcements
1

A New Enhanced SmartThings API Experience

Upcoming Changes to the SmartThings API

SmartThings API Blog Image
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Please note, this was also shared on the SmartThings blog.

Over the last several years, the SmartThings platform has grown into one of the most robust orchestration layers in the smart home industry, with over 460M+ registered users and hundreds of WWST partner brands — and our API is the gateway that connects third party apps and platforms to the SmartThings ecosystem.

Today, our commercial partners use it to power everything from short-term rental platforms and energy management systems to API aggregators and custom smart home dashboards, while our developer community uses our API to optimize their personal smart homes.

To ensure the SmartThings API remains capable, reliable, and secure at this scale, we are evolving our infrastructure. In the upcoming months, we will introduce dedicated, paid commercial API tiers as well as a $4.99 a month plan for non-commercial, individual developers.

To note, this update does not affect the millions of SmartThings users who use the SmartThings App with thousands of WWST partner devices.

Why are we evolving the SmartThings API?

As our commercial partners and developer community continue to build integrations, they are asking and expecting more from our infrastructure. To support the next generation of smart home innovation at scale, we are transitioning to a structured API model. This evolution allows us to invest heavily in the enterprise-grade features our partners and users have been asking for:

  • Platform Stability: Upgrading our platform to enhance our enterprise-grade reliability required for high-volume, commercial deployments.

  • Optimized Integrations: Building upon our infrastructure to further support scalable integrations.

  • Expanded Capabilities: Continuing access to Samsung devices such as TVs, smart refrigerators, and more with device states, controls, and health parameters as well as future functionality to build richer integrations.

Powering the Next Generation of Smart Home Services

We’re building on the SmartThings platform, shaped by your feedback, to deliver even more powerful tools for creating premium IoT experiences. The SmartThings API offers different tiers that can support a high rate limit, gives access to our multi-protocol ecosystem (Matter, Cloud-to-Cloud, Zigbee, Z-Wave), and contains deep Samsung integration required to scale your business on our backend and power a variety of use cases, including:

  • Short-Term Rentals, Hospitality, and Property Tech: Automate access control, optimize climate, and enable seamless property management across thousands of units at scale.

  • Telecommunications: Enhance broadband and 5G subscriber apps with premium family care and security solutions.

  • Security: Power smart alarms, access systems, and remote monitoring with our ecosystem of devices and consistent, real-time API data like device states.

  • Senior Care: Enable non-intrusive wellness tracking, activity insights, and automated routines to safely support independent living and aging in place.

  • Family Care: Deliver peace of mind with real-time sensor data, keeping families connected and homes running smoothly.

  • Insurance: Leverage real-time home state data and predictive analytics to proactively prevent damage, reduce risk, and lower claim costs.

  • Energy Management: Build advanced tracking algorithms and cost-saving utility dashboards.

  • With many more use cases and verticals.

New Tools:

  • Upgraded Developer Experience: We will deliver a new Developer Center experience and refreshed documentation for API users to make the API as easy to use and implement as possible.

  • The API Usage Dashboard: In the new Developer Center, we will be launching a new API Dashboard. This dashboard will allow partners and individual developers to track API call volume with flexible time-series data. The dashboard will give you current usage and data points to optimize your code and determine which pricing tier fits your needs.

These updates will make onboarding faster and API management more intuitive.

Next Steps & Timeline: We are targeting availability for the new commercial tiers and personal plan offering in October 2026 – stay tuned for additional details.

Please note: Your current API usage will not be interrupted today. We are announcing this now to give our API users ample time to prepare for the transition. Free access will remain available through Q3. We will not begin applying the new usage limits or phasing out free access until October 2026.

  • For Current Commercial Partners: Please reach out to us at partners@smartthings.com to ensure a seamless transition.

  • For Current Personal Users: We will share more information detailing the full timeline, transition guidelines, and paid plan.

  • New to the SmartThings API? Are you evaluating SmartThings as the backend for your business? We are currently onboarding new partners to discuss SmartThings API capabilities, pricing, and scalability.

Thank you for building with SmartThings. Our investment in our API and transition to a paid model are efforts to provide an incredible service that will continue to support your needs.

— The Samsung SmartThings Team

2

Reading the title I was expecting the API getting local features so the SmartThings app would be able to work offline in case of Internet or server outages. Instead, it seems to double down on the cloud.

If I understand correctly, does this mean small developers that create, for instance, smartwatch apps for users to control SmartThings, will have to pay a monthly fee now? Or that’s for cloud device integrations?

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Sounds rather like that.

What about API access to use the Rules API?

What about API access to develop Edge drivers and other integrations?

What about the CLI and AWA which are pitched as development tools?

Not a lot of notice to plan and implement an exit strategy.

4

And the grandfathered Personal Access Tokens? Will just calling something a couple times a day from a Macrodroid macro be a paid feature?

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And what about 3rd party tools and integrations that rely on the API such as Sharptools, ConstantGraph, etc?

6

Well… I guess I misunderstood the question here:

I thought it was about the technical aspects of the API.

7

Curious how this impacts the Home Assistant integration if at all? I no longer have a SmartThings hub, but still buy Samsung and use the app to push my appliance data to Home Assistant.

8

This seems directly affect home assistant and other integrations

9

I think someone answered the survey asking for the API to become a paid service :melting_face:

11

I hate to be cynical,but this sounds like a jam tomorrow promise. From reading the above, it doesn’t sound like an api enhancement but infrastructure changes and charging tiers, with a hint of jam tomorrow :thinking:

12

Sounds like the biggest API change/enhancement is that it now can return HTTP 402: Payment Required.

13

Once again, a swing and a miss!

I find it was best explained about 7 hours ago by u/firestorm_v1 over on Reddit:

“Ah, yes. Enshittification. It comes for everything eventually.”

14

Poncey jam at that, and no bread.

15

This really sucks. I understand some commercial partners probably need/want a cloud API, but individuals, Home Assistant users and power users would be better off with a local API that doesn’t require the infrastructure overhead that a cloud API requires.

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I will not pretend to be as technical or knowledgeable as the other commenters on here but I have to observe that cloud infrastructure is not free.
The cost of cloud infrastructure was behind the move to Edge which, although painful for many, was a good thing.
Who can blame SmartThings for further reduction of cloud costs, or desiring to have people/organisations pay for the cloud infrastructure that they use.
I have only used the SmartThings API to develop custom (community) Edge drivers. If I had to pay for that facility, during my development cycle, I would.
If SmartThings wanted to further reduce cloud infrastructure costs, moving the App to local, and not cloud, execution would be one way (I may be naïve here).
This is my 10p (14c, or whatever the exchange rate is). I just wanted to counter all the negativity on this thread by stating how much I appreciate that SmartThings is basically free after the cost of hub purchase.
SmartThings, keep up the good work.

17

I think there’s an important distinction that might have been missed here.

The $4.99/month plan (and the new commercial tiers) is only being introduced for people using the SmartThings API - specifically “non-commercial, individual developers.” The announcement is very clear that this change does not affect the millions of regular SmartThings users who just use the official app and their devices.

Those regular users are also consuming cloud infrastructure every single day:

  • Remote access and control from outside the home
  • Push notifications and alerts
  • Routines and automations that aren’t fully local/Edge
  • Device history, presence detection, and Samsung account integration
  • The app itself talking to the backend

If the main justification is truly that “cloud infrastructure is not free” and that users/organisations should pay for the cloud resources they consume, then it would logically follow that every SmartThings user who relies on the cloud backend should contribute something - not just the relatively small group of individual developers using the public API.

Instead, SmartThings is choosing to keep the consumer experience completely free while adding a fee only for API access by individual developers (and higher tiers for commercial use). That suggests the goal isn’t primarily a broad cost-recovery exercise across all cloud usage, but rather monetising the developer/platform side of the business separately from the end-user product.

For people like you who have been using the API mainly to build community Edge drivers, this does represent a new ongoing cost for something that was previously free. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of negativity - many in the community feel the change is being framed as “necessary because cloud costs money,” when in reality only one specific group of users is being asked to pay.

It’s possible to support SmartThings wanting to make money from serious commercial users and heavy API consumers while still feeling this particular approach (a flat monthly fee aimed at individual/hobbyist developers) is poorly targeted.

I’ll probably pay the $4.99 fee because I get real value from the API, but SmartThings shouldn’t sell the change as “paying for cloud infrastructure” when the millions of regular users who rely on the cloud every day through the app aren’t being charged anything. Quite a lot of those users would likely have jumped ship years ago without the independent developers who created Edge drivers and the broader community that has provided ongoing support, workarounds, and improvements.

18

yeah, the fact the whole damn app uses the cloud but will remain free, but the tiny portion using the API will get charged is certainly a slap in the face.

One metric, the Home Assistant integration is used by approximately 196,000 people (based on their active installation number for the ST integration and last report of ~2 million installs). I’ll round that up to 250k to cover other integrations and individuals hitting the API. So SmartThings is saying that 0.05% of their users is putting such a burden on their cloud infrastructure that they need to start charging for it?!

19

I agree with everything you say above @Andreas_Roedl
Maybe these new fees are a stepping stone to a fully paid for service.
Maybe that is the only ‘fair’ system, but what impact would a monthly $4.99 (which ends up being ST£4.99 here in the UK) have on SmartThings usage?
I agree that a fee on community developers will likely kill the community (of which I am a junior member).
I honestly don’t know the answer.

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I don’t think it’ll kill the community - not if they actually make the paid tier worth it with some proper perks.

Full Atlassian access (especially the Wiki), write permission to the Edge Driver repository, a proper voice in future API development, decent VIP support… and obviously the legendary SmartThings T-shirt. Get those right and a lot of us will happily pay the fiver and keep building.

:smiley:

21

@Automated_House, when you talk about 196k of 2m users, I presume you are specifically talking about HA (I am not a HA person)? The above announcement mentions 460m SmartThings (presumably App) users.
My (poor) understanding of HA is that most users pay a fee for a remote access service.
With SmartThings I strive to be completely local (in terms of Edge drivers and routines).
I would really like to have a much more local (and less cloud) based SmartThings App. Remote access then might involve some fee (like HA; excuse my ignorance, but educate me).
As always, excuse my ignorance, but I love SmartThings.