ESPHome
ESPHome opens the 2026.11 beta days after its second October patch.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
Home Assistant vs Incus
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Home Assistant and Incus — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Home Assistant vs Incus: at a glance
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.
What is Incus?
Incus 7.6 fixes 18 security issues, eight critical, and adds SR-IOV NIC live migration
Incus 7.6, released October 30, carries 18 security fixes, eight rated critical, many of them about restricted projects reaching the default project or the host, plus an authentication bypass through unverified client certificate chains. Its features aim at larger environments: live migration for VMs using SR-IOV NICs, multifd for VM live migration, cluster healing options, compression for block volumes, and OIDC opaque tokens. 7.5 before it added live migration between projects, cluster metrics and NVIDIA GPU cliques. The 7.0 LTS branch received a second patch, 7.0.2, with no described changes.
Home Assistant vs Incus: editorial side-by-side
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.
Incus
5.0INFRA · APIS
Incus 7.6 fixes 18 security issues, eight critical, and adds SR-IOV NIC live migration
◆ Current state
Incus 7.6, released October 30, carries 18 security fixes, eight rated critical, many of them about restricted projects reaching the default project or the host, plus an authentication bypass through unverified client certificate chains. Its features aim at larger environments: live migration for VMs using SR-IOV NICs, multifd for VM live migration, cluster healing options, compression for block volumes, and OIDC opaque tokens. 7.5 before it added live migration between projects, cluster metrics and NVIDIA GPU cliques. The 7.0 LTS branch received a second patch, 7.0.2, with no described changes.
◆ Where it's heading
Live migration is still the through-line: 7.4 made it near-live for dependent disks, 7.5 took it across projects, and 7.6 extends it to VMs using SR-IOV NICs. The other thread is multi-tenancy under scrutiny. The size of the 7.6 security batch, with several critical items in project isolation, shows that restricted projects are now being tested as a real boundary, and the release adds a build and threat model for Anthropic's OSS Scanner.
◆ Prediction
Expect a 7.6.x patch or further security fixes, because the project-isolation findings cover a wide surface. The monthly feature cadence should continue with more live-migration throughput work, given multifd and the throughput improvements in this release.
Alternatives to Home Assistant and Incus
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 Home Assistant or Incus.
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 Home Assistant alternatives → · See all Incus alternatives →
Recent activity from Home Assistant and Incus
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoHome Assistant2026.11: HACS becomes a built-in Marketplace ⚡
- 5d agoIncus18 security fixes, SR-IOV NIC live migration and multifd
- 19d agoIncusSecond patch on the 7.0 LTS branch
- 29d agoHome Assistant2026.10: Trigger IDs get a UI and maps move to OpenStreetMap
- 1mo agoIncusLive migration across projects, cluster metrics, NVIDIA GPU cliques
- 2mo agoHome Assistant2026.9: Modbus Connection Sharing and UI Device Selection
- 2mo agoIncusIncus 7.4 adds near-live migration and Secure Boot key management ⚡
- 3mo agoHome Assistant2026.8: Approachability Improvements and ESPHome Starter Kit
- 3mo agoIncusNative Windows and macOS installers; QMP command timeouts
- 3mo agoIncusFirst patch release on the 7.0 LTS branch
- 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 Home Assistant and Incus?
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 Home Assistant better than Incus?
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 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.
What are the best alternatives to Incus?
Top Incus alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Incus alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/incus for the full list with editorial commentary on each.