Which Zigbee dongle for Home Assistant?

Most machines running Home Assistant have no smart home radios in them. A Home Assistant Green has none at all, and neither does a mini PC or a bare Raspberry Pi. The software reaches anything on your network the moment it starts, but Zigbee, Thread, Z-Wave and Bluetooth each need a radio you plug in yourself. That is true whichever hardware you run it on, with one exception: Home Assistant Yellow has a Zigbee and Thread radio built onto the board.

So the question is not whether you need a USB radio. It is which ones, and how many. The short answer is one adapter per protocol, because a single dongle running two of them at once is not something Home Assistant supports.

What Home Assistant reaches with no extra hardware

Anything on Wi-Fi or Ethernet needs nothing extra. Home Assistant discovers most of those devices on your network by itself and offers them up to be set up. Matter devices on Wi-Fi or Ethernet are the same story, with one app installed to run the Matter controller, and commissioning happens over your phone's Bluetooth rather than the hub's. Home Assistant says outright that it does not use its host's Bluetooth adapter for that. MQTT needs a broker, not a radio.

Everything below that line is a radio decision.

One adapter runs one protocol

This is the most misunderstood point in the category, so it is worth being blunt. A Connect ZBT-2 can run Zigbee or Thread. It cannot run both.

The hardware could do it in theory. Home Assistant tested that approach on the previous generation and abandoned it, stating that it found the operation inconsistent, often causing device stability issues, and that it strongly recommends dedicating a device to each protocol. The Silicon Labs multiprotocol app that once offered concurrent operation is now marked deprecated, with the project saying it will be removed.

Switching an adapter from Zigbee to Thread means flashing Thread firmware onto it, and Nabu Casa's own support article is direct about the consequence: you will no longer be able to control your Zigbee devices with that adapter. So if you want Zigbee, Thread and Z-Wave running in the same house, that is three adapters and three USB ports.

The name on the box has changed twice

Australian shelves are still carrying two generations under three names, so get this straight before you order.

Home Assistant SkyConnect was renamed Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 in June 2024. Same hardware, same capability, same support: only the name changed, and retailers kept selling SkyConnect-branded stock while it lasted. You will still find it listed as SkyConnect in Australia today.

Connect ZBT-2, which arrived in November 2025, is not a rename. It is different hardware, built on a Silicon Labs MG24 radio with an ESP32-S3 handling the USB side, and it replaced the ZBT-1 outright.

One place the old name still matters. Nabu Casa runs a free replacement programme for a faulty part in the first ZBT-1 production run, sold between June and October 2024. It covers ZBT-1-branded units and explicitly does not apply to SkyConnect-branded ones. Identical hardware, different warranty exposure, so check which name is printed on the box.

On the Z-Wave side there is no such history. Connect ZWA-2 launched in August 2025 as a new line, not a replacement for anything.

Which adapter to buy

Zigbee: Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2

For most people adding Zigbee to a Green, a mini PC or a Pi, this is the answer. It is the adapter Home Assistant lists first and the one it pairs with Green. The radio sits in an antenna on a weighted base rather than a stick buried behind the machine, which is the biggest practical difference from the old ZBT-1. It also talks to the host four times faster than the ZBT-1 did, at 460800 baud against 115200, and ships with a 1.5 m USB-C cable.

It works with the Zigbee integration built into Home Assistant and with Zigbee2MQTT, and there are migration wizards for moving an existing network onto it.

Zigbee on a budget: SONOFF ZBDongle-E

Home Assistant lists the SONOFF ZBDongle-E among its own recommended Zigbee adapters, alongside the SMLIGHT SLZB-07 and the ConBee III. If price is the deciding factor, it is a legitimate pick and not a compatibility compromise. What you give up is the antenna on a weighted base, which is the ZBT-2's real advantage in a house with brick walls and a hub in a cupboard.

What to avoid is easier to state. Home Assistant specifically does not recommend the old CC2530 and CC2531 sticks, which it reports become unreliable past roughly 15 to 20 devices, the ConBee II, or any arrangement that puts the adapter on the far end of a network connection rather than on USB.

Thread: a second ZBT-2, or something you already own

Adapters ship running Zigbee. Home Assistant's documentation states that Connect ZBT-1, Connect ZBT-2 and Yellow all run Zigbee out of the box, and that enabling Thread currently involves manual steps. It also notes that integrating its own Thread border router with Matter is still work in progress.

Before you buy one, check what is already in the house. An Apple TV 4K, a HomePod mini or a second-generation Nest Hub already acts as a Thread border router, and Matter over Thread devices will join through it.

Z-Wave: Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2

Z-Wave needs three things, not one: the adapter, the Z-Wave JS app, and the Z-Wave integration. Connect ZWA-2 is a Z-Wave 800 adapter on the same weighted-base design as the ZBT-2, and there is one worldwide model rather than regional variants. It defaults to the European region, then sets itself to the right frequency from the location in your Home Assistant settings, which for Australia is 919.8 and 921.4 MHz.

Two things to know before you commit. Z-Wave Long Range is documented for North America and Europe only, with no Australian frequency pair published, so treat Long Range as a feature you do not have here. And a Z-Wave end device has its frequency fixed in hardware, so Australian-frequency sensors and locks are not optional. A US-frequency device will not join an Australian network.

Plug it straight into a USB port rather than through a hub or an extension, and stand it upright. There is an accelerometer in the base that checks you have.

Bluetooth: usually not a dongle at all

Bluetooth is short-range, which is the whole problem: a dongle in your hub covers the room the hub is in and not much else. The answer is usually an ESP32 running ESPHome as a Bluetooth proxy, sitting in the room where the devices actually are. Worth knowing how Home Assistant ranks these, though, because it is not simply proxy over dongle: an Ethernet-connected proxy sits above a good USB adapter, and a Wi-Fi-connected one sits below it. If you do buy a USB adapter, check the documentation first. Several are listed as unsupported outright, and the internal radio on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ or 4B works with limited performance.

Where you plug it in matters as much as which one you buy

Zigbee, Thread and Bluetooth all live in the 2.4 GHz band, and so does the electrical noise that leaks out of USB 3.0 ports. Home Assistant's guidance is unambiguous: avoid USB 3.x ports, use a shielded USB extension cable into a USB 2.0 port, and if the machine only has USB 3.x ports, put a powered USB 2.0 hub in between. The ZBT-1 shipped with an extension cable for exactly this reason.

The rest is placement. Keep the adapter away from your Wi-Fi access point, put it somewhere central rather than in a cupboard against a brick wall, and pair battery devices where they will live rather than next to the coordinator. Home Assistant reports signal strength per device if you want to check your work: -60 dBm or better is a strong link, and -80 dBm or worse means a noisy or weak one. Ignore the LQI figure on its own, because manufacturers do not calculate it the same way.

One more thing that costs nothing: a mains-powered Zigbee device you already own will do more for your range than a dearer adapter will. Zigbee networks lean heavily on mains-powered devices to repeat messages. Battery sensors never do.

What it costs

Home Assistant's own recommended prices are US$49 for the Connect ZBT-2 and US$69 for the Connect ZWA-2. Australian retail sits above that. As at July 2026 the ZBT-2 ran from about $89 to $105 depending where you looked, and the ZWA-2 about $99. So a Green with both radios lands somewhere between $460 and $485, and that is the number worth planning against rather than the price of the hub on its own.

One thing the badge does not mean

You will see "Works with Home Assistant" on smart home packaging. It does not apply to adapters. The programme certifies end devices only, and states plainly that it does not certify hubs, bridges, repeaters or Zigbee and Z-Wave adapters. So no dongle is a certified one, including Home Assistant's own, and any listing claiming otherwise has the badge wrong.