Core vs SmartThings
Core and SmartThings are both home automation software. Core is open source under Apache-2.0, with 92k GitHub stars. SmartThings is a commercial product from Samsung Electronics.
Which to pick
- Pick Core when
- You want local control of a smart home across many brands without relying on vendor clouds.
- Pick SmartThings when
- You own Samsung appliances or TVs and want broad device support from a mainstream app.
Side by side
A home automation platform that runs locally and connects thousands of smart home devices and services, with automations, dashboards and voice control.
Samsung's smart home platform and app for controlling and automating Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter and Wi-Fi devices, often via Samsung TVs and hubs.
Monthly releases sometimes break integrations, and complex setups take ongoing tinkering.
Most automations rely on Samsung's cloud, and past platform changes broke custom integrations.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server
Cloud service and mobile app
Python and SQLAlchemy
Not published
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Closed source, sold by Samsung Electronics
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
92k GitHub stars
486 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 13 years ago, latest release 2026.10.4.
Not known
Other comparisons
More home automation platforms
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.