ESPHome
ESPHome opens the 2026.11 beta days after its second October patch.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
Dragonfly vs Home Assistant
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Dragonfly and Home Assistant — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Dragonfly vs Home Assistant: at a glance
What is Dragonfly?
Dragonfly opens a 2.1 line with metrics that explain why replicas drop.
Dragonfly tagged v2.1.0 on November 4, exporting snapshot counters, a save-in-progress gauge and replica disconnects labeled closed, error or timeout. Before, a replica dropped for stalling was indistinguishable from one whose connection simply closed. The 1.40 and 2.0 lines keep getting small cluster-mode fixes, including faster GetSlotInfo and slot migration that no longer drops writes.
What is Home Assistant?
Home Assistant folds HACS into core as a built-in Marketplace for community add-ons.
Home Assistant ships one release a month, and 2026.11 is the largest yet. HACS, the community store for custom integrations, cards and themes, is now built in as the Marketplace under Settings, on every installation type and without a GitHub account. The same release lets targets exclude items, reworks entity naming in a backward-incompatible way, and adds Matter cameras with talk-back, LoRaWAN, local-drive backups, trace tools and 38 integrations.
Dragonfly vs Home Assistant: editorial side-by-side
Dragonfly
5.0INFRA · APIS
Dragonfly opens a 2.1 line with metrics that explain why replicas drop.
◆ Current state
Dragonfly tagged v2.1.0 on November 4, exporting snapshot counters, a save-in-progress gauge and replica disconnects labeled closed, error or timeout. Before, a replica dropped for stalling was indistinguishable from one whose connection simply closed. The 1.40 and 2.0 lines keep getting small cluster-mode fixes, including faster GetSlotInfo and slot migration that no longer drops writes.
◆ Where it's heading
Dragonfly is maturing for production operations: the 2.0 line fixed cluster correctness, and 2.1 starts by making replication and persistence observable from Prometheus. The project says it prefers small incremental features, so 2.1 will likely grow the same way.
◆ Prediction
More metrics and cluster-mode fixes on 2.1, with 1.40 and 2.0 still getting backports for a while.
Home Assistant
6.3INFRA · APIS
Home Assistant folds HACS into core as a built-in Marketplace for community add-ons.
◆ Current state
Home Assistant ships one release a month, and 2026.11 is the largest yet. HACS, the community store for custom integrations, cards and themes, is now built in as the Marketplace under Settings, on every installation type and without a GitHub account. The same release lets targets exclude items, reworks entity naming in a backward-incompatible way, and adds Matter cameras with talk-back, LoRaWAN, local-drive backups, trace tools and 38 integrations.
◆ Where it's heading
The 2026 releases keep moving power-user features out of YAML and side installs into the default UI: purpose-specific triggers, trigger IDs, card picker, and now the community store itself. With HACS inside the release process, the project takes on responsibility for third-party code it previously kept at arm's length. Debuggability is the second thread, with traces, per-integration logs and an action record arriving together.
◆ Prediction
Expect follow-up releases to add curation or quality signals to the Marketplace, since the notes call this its first version. Entity naming fallout will likely drive fixes in 2026.12.
Alternatives to Dragonfly and Home Assistant
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Dragonfly or Home Assistant.
Apideck
Apideck rebuilds its SD Worx connector after the old login method is switched off.
Currents
Currents lists itself in the Claude and ChatGPT/Codex plugin directories.
Jackett
Jackett ships a daily build to keep hundreds of torrent indexers working as sites move and close.
Hatchet
Hatchet adds magic-link login and publishes its CLI on npm.
Redocly
Redocly forks Markdoc and points Open in Claude at the desktop app.
See all Dragonfly alternatives → · See all Home Assistant alternatives →
Recent activity from Dragonfly and Home Assistant
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoDragonflyDragonfly 2.1.0 exports snapshot and replica-disconnect metrics
- 1d agoHome Assistant2026.11: HACS becomes a built-in Marketplace ⚡
- 6d agoDragonflyi2.0.6: faster slot info lookups in cluster mode
- 15d agoDragonflyi1.40.13: Sidekiq queues placed on the same shard
- 15d agoDragonflyi2.0.5: Fibonacci hashing evens out slot-based sharding
- 15d agoDragonflyi1.40.12: single-shard BLMOVE completes in one hop
- 15d agoDragonflyi2.0.4: slot migration no longer drops writes to empty buckets
- 29d agoHome Assistant2026.10: Trigger IDs get a UI and maps move to OpenStreetMap
- 2mo agoHome Assistant2026.9: Modbus Connection Sharing and UI Device Selection
- 3mo agoHome Assistant2026.8: Approachability Improvements and ESPHome Starter Kit
- 4mo agoHome Assistant2026.7: Automations that speak your language ⚡
- 5mo agoHome Assistant2026.6: Dashboard Card Picker Redesign
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Dragonfly and Home Assistant?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Home Assistant is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Dragonfly better than Home Assistant?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Home Assistant is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Dragonfly?
Top Dragonfly alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Dragonfly alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dragonfly for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Home Assistant?
Top Home Assistant alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Home Assistant alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/home-assistant for the full list with editorial commentary on each.