Home Assistant hardware: Pi, mini PC or VM?

Home Assistant will happily run on almost anything, which is exactly why choosing the hardware feels harder than the smart home itself. The good news: the wrong first choice is cheap to fix.

The short answer

For most people, Home Assistant hardware means Home Assistant Operating System (HAOS) on a machine that does nothing else. That is the installation type the project recommends [1][2]. Pick Home Assistant Green if you want it running tonight without flashing anything, a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with at least 2 GB of RAM if you already own one, an x86-64 mini PC if you want a spare box with more headroom, or a virtual machine if you already run a hypervisor. Pick Home Assistant Container only if you already run Docker and can live without apps [1][2]. The documented minimums are small, for example 2 GB of RAM and 2 virtual CPUs for a VM [6]. What decides the choice is less about speed and more about three questions: how much of the operating system you want to maintain, where your Zigbee radio can sit, and whether the host runs around the clock anyway.

How it works

The table summarises what the Home Assistant documentation lists for each path. Prices are not in it on purpose; they come later, with a date.

1. Two supported installation types. The installation page lists Home Assistant Operating System and Home Assistant Container [1]. HAOS is a minimal operating system that includes Home Assistant, the Supervisor that updates it, and support for apps. Apps are extra software packages that run next to Home Assistant, and older guides call them add-ons. Container runs Home Assistant as a Docker container on a Linux system that you maintain yourself, without apps [2]. You may still read about "Core" and "Supervised" in older articles. The project announced on 22 May 2025 that support for both would end with release 2025.12, and its FAQ now calls them no longer offered or supported [2][3]. Ignore guides that recommend them.
2. Home Assistant Green. Green ships with HAOS installed. The manufacturer lists a Rockchip RK3566 with four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, 32 GB of eMMC storage, two USB 2.0 ports and gigabit Ethernet, and gives about 1.7 W at idle and about 3 W under load, both stated at 12 V [7]. The recommended retail price on the manufacturer's page was 179 € including taxes when we retrieved it on 25 Oct 2026. Retailers set their own prices, so check the shop [7]. Green has no Zigbee or Thread radio. The manufacturer's adapter, Connect ZBT-2, lists at 45 € including taxes in the same way, comes with a 1.5 m USB cable, and runs either Zigbee or Thread, not both at once [8].
3. Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi guide asks for a Pi 5 or Pi 4 with at least 2 GB of RAM, a microSD card of Application Class 2 (look for the A2 label) with at least 32 GB, and Ethernet, which it calls more reliable than Wi-Fi [4]. A Pi 3 appears only in the Container guide [1]. Use a proper power supply: the guide warns that phone chargers and computer USB ports may not deliver enough [4]. For the Pi 5, Raspberry Pi recommends its 27 W USB-C supply [12]. Raspberry Pi lists a typical active current of 800 mA for the bare board [12], and says peak consumption under heavy workloads rises to around 12 W [13]. The Home Assistant database writes constantly. The Recorder documentation warns that on a Pi with an SD card this can affect response time and the life of the card, and suggests a larger commit interval such as 30 seconds, storing less data or storing it elsewhere [10].
4. x86-64 mini PC. The documentation expects a dedicated machine that boots in UEFI mode, with Secure Boot turned off. An internal SATA drive, M.2 SSD or eMMC is the normal boot medium, and an external USB SSD is possible but not recommended. Some NVMe drives and hard disks use native 4K sectors only, and HAOS cannot boot from those [5]. HAOS has no installer: you write the image yourself, either from an Ubuntu USB stick or directly onto the drive [5]. The docs give no power figure for such machines, so idle watts are yours to measure. Related pages cover what to look for in a mini PC.
5. Virtual machine. The Linux guide offers the HAOS image as QCOW2 for KVM and as VDI for VirtualBox, asks for at least 2 GB of RAM and 2 CPUs, insists on UEFI, and recommends a bridged network adapter so Home Assistant is reachable on your LAN [6]. The Unraid steps mention a default disk size of 32 GB [6]. On Proxmox VE you attach the QCOW2 image with qm disk import, and a UEFI VM needs an EFI disk so that boot settings persist [14][15]. A USB dongle reaches the VM through USB passthrough. Home Assistant's guide shows this for KVM with virt-install --hostdev [6]. Proxmox warns that host USB passthrough pins the VM to that host, so you cannot move it online to another one [15]. The documentation itself says that if you are not familiar with virtual machines, you should install HAOS directly on a Pi or similar hardware [6].
6. Container. The Docker route needs Docker Engine 23.0.0 or newer. Docker Desktop will not work [5]. The documented run command uses a privileged container and host networking, and USB devices must be mapped in by hand, for example --device /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 [5]. There are no apps. Some integrations, such as Thread and Z-Wave, are controlled by apps and have no out-of-the-box support on Container [1]. That is fine if you already run MQTT brokers, Zigbee software and the like as containers. If not, you rebuild by hand what HAOS gives you.
7. The radio decides more than the CPU. In ZHA, Home Assistant's Zigbee integration, the coordinator is the radio adapter, usually a USB dongle in the same computer that runs Home Assistant [9]. Zigbee works in the 2.4 GHz band, and the docs name USB 3 ports, unshielded USB 3 devices and cables, and Wi-Fi access points as interference sources. They recommend a USB 2.0 port or a powered USB 2.0 hub, a long shielded extension cable, and a position near the middle of the house [9]. A server in a basement rack is a poor place for a dongle. There is a second route: ZHA also accepts network-connected coordinators addressed as socket://. The documentation cautions against running a coordinator through a serial-over-IP proxy across Wi-Fi, WAN or a VPN, because the serial protocols cannot cope with packet loss and delay [9]. We found no recommendation for a specific wired network coordinator in those docs, so treat that as unverified. Our assessment: a wired LAN coordinator on the same switch is the more careful of the network options, and USB with an extension cable stays the first choice where it fits. If you change the radio later, ZHA offers a migration function [9].
8. Power in euros. Watts become kilowatt-hours over time: kWh per year = watts × 8,760 h ÷ 1,000. Costs follow from your price per kWh. The BDEW's analysis of August 2026 puts the average household price in Germany at 37.0 ct/kWh for 2026 so far [16][17]. Put your own price in; we use the average only as a stand-in.
9. Switching later is cheap. A backup can be restored during onboarding on a new device, and the new device can be a different type, for example a Pi replaced by something else [11]. Plug radios into the new device first, keep the encryption key from the backup emergency kit, and make sure the new device has more storage than the old one uses plus at least 2 GB free. The docs mention about 45 minutes for the restore of a larger installation [11]. If the radio changes, you also migrate the Zigbee network [9][11]. Our assessment: that makes it reasonable to start small and move up when you hit a real limit.

A decision example (assumed setup, not ours)

Imagine a two-floor flat, a Proxmox host in a basement closet that runs 24/7 anyway, and about 20 planned Zigbee devices. We have no Home Assistant installation in our inventory as of 25 Oct 2026, so this is a thought experiment with assumed numbers.

Option A is a HAOS VM on the host with the dongle on a 1.5 m cable. It costs no new hardware, but the radio then sits next to other computers in a corner of the building, the opposite of the placement the docs recommend. Option B is a HAOS VM on the host with a wired network coordinator in the hallway. Option C is a Green in the hallway with a ZBT-2 on its cable, which costs 179 € plus 45 € at the manufacturer's recommended prices on 25 Oct 2026, so 224 € in total, and about 5.51 € of electricity per year for the Green itself at idle, by the calculation below. Our assessment: radio placement usually beats everything else, so C or a Pi in the hallway wins unless you need the VM host for other reasons. If the host is already running, A or B adds hardly any new device.

The calculation, with the price of 0.37 €/kWh as a stand-in:

kWh/year = watts × 8,760 h ÷ 1,000        cost = kWh × 0.37 €

Green, idle 1.7 W (manufacturer figure):     14.9 kWh  →  5.51 €
Green, load 3 W (manufacturer figure):       26.3 kWh  →  9.72 €
Pi 5, 0.8 A × 5.1 V ≈ 4.1 W
  (typical active current of the bare board,
   no peripherals, no supply losses):        35.7 kWh  → 13.22 €
Mini PC, assumed 8 / 15 / 25 W (not measured):
                                   70.1 / 131.4 / 219.0 kWh → 25.93 / 48.62 / 81.03 €

The mini PC figures are assumptions to show the spread, not measurements. The Pi figure is the documented active current, not an idle measurement. For a VM on an existing host, the cost is the extra load on that host, which we have not measured. Measure your own host with a plug-in meter and use the guide on energy costs listed under Related pages.

Checklist

• Decide whether you want to maintain an operating system. If not, choose HAOS on dedicated hardware.
• Check that the hardware meets the docs: Pi 4 or 5 with at least 2 GB, x86-64 with UEFI, VM with at least 2 GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs.
• Check the boot medium: an A2 microSD card of at least 32 GB for a Pi, an internal drive without 4K-only sectors for an x86-64 machine.
• Check the power supply before you blame the software, especially on a Pi 5.
• Place the Zigbee adapter on a USB 2.0 port or a powered USB 2.0 hub, on an extension cable, away from USB 3 devices and Wi-Fi access points.
• Decide on a VM only if you can pass the USB dongle through, and note that passthrough pins the VM to its host.
• Use a network coordinator only over wired LAN, never over Wi-Fi, WAN or VPN.
• Switch on automatic backups, store a copy off the device and keep the emergency kit key separate.
• Raise the Recorder commit interval or exclude noisy entities if you run on an SD card.
• Keep free disk space at least as large as your database, as the Recorder documentation asks.
• Measure the idle power of your host and calculate the euros with your own price.