Seriously confused… When i goto smartthings.com and watch the promotions, read the Getting Started (Getting Started) it never mentions buying a hub… is the hub obsolete now?
You only need a hub if you want to use a zigbee, thread, or Zwave device. If you are only going to use Wi-Fi devices or devices with their own bridge, or a Samsung smart television, or smart appliance, you don’t need a hub. And at this point, that’s the vast majority of smartthings customers.
If you do want to use Zigbee or Z wave devices, then you would get a hub from a smartthings hardware partner, which for North America, or Europe is Aeotec.
2025 Update:
if you want to use Matter devices with smartthings, you will need a hub to act as the matter controller. a number of Samsung devices, including some Samsung smart televisions, and smart appliances have that kind of hub built in, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a standalone hub.
FAQ: What do I need to add a Matter device to the SmartThings app? Do I need a bridge router device?
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You only need a ST hub for Z-WAVE, ZigBee and Lan devices. WiFi devices that work with ST do not need a hub.
I believe but could be wrong that upcoming Matter devices will not need a ST hub if they are WiFi based or are Thread based and you have a Thread Boarder Router.
ST v3 & Aeotec hubs are boarder routers in addition to some Echo, Google Nest, and Apple Mini Home pod devices.
Works with ST hubs are currently manufactured by Aeotec, not SmartThings.
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Hubs have never been required.
They were required back in 2014 and 2015–adding a hub is what defined your location.
This changed in preparation for the “one app” project which was released in early 2018, when the apps for Samsung smart appliances and Samsung smart televisions (two different apps) were combined with the one for the hubs . After that you could have a “hub optional” configuration. 
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Interesting. I was developing applications for SmartThings several years ago. It seems SmartThings has changed some since i last looked into it.
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Major major changes since 2018, and more on the way.
A new platform architecture was announced back in 2020 and they are just now discontinuing the old architecture and transitioning all customers, a process which is expected to take several more months to complete.
Official announcements:
And
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Sure, I recently bought a SmartThings hub on eBay and had to immediately return it for a refund after realising that it was serving no purpose as the SmartThings app handles all my Wi-Fi-connected devices. I don’t have any ZigBee or Z-Wave devices.
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when I try to add “Yale Linus L2”as Matter device to SmartThings , SmartThings show popup,
device not added, Hub requried in my Samsung Galaxy s25 Ultra phone,
So I can say compatible hub required to work matter.
Matter devices require a Matter controller and in the ST ecosystem that’s a hub. So, yes for both Matter over Wi-Fi, Matter over Thread, and Matter Bridge devices you need a ST hub.
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