ESPHome VS. Tasmota : When to Use Which and Why

Both Tasmota and ESPHome are nice “platforms” for building a smart home. We have already discussed the getting started part with Tasmota and ESP32. Depending on the use-case, ESPHome may be a better choice. In this article, we will discuss the practical things about ESPHome and Tasmota taking it granted that you are using an ESP32 development board.

Why ESP32 over ESP8266?

The ESP8266 is cheaper but doesn’t have as many functionalities, and has some limitations when it comes to GPIO mapping. The ESP32 is much more powerful, latest, future-proof, comes with more GPIOs with multiple functions, has a faster Wi-Fi, supports BLE.

ESPHome VS. Tasmota

Tasmota is a ready-to-use solution as an alternative for Sonoff switches. It works great on ESP32 and you can add it to Home Assistant in 10 minutes. It supports a ton of peripherals. There is Tasmotizer to easily flash, there is a nice GUI Menu, and it uses MQTT. ESPHome, on the other hand, does not require an MQTT broker if you are using Home Assistant (it uses native API). Tasmota offers you a quick configuration through the GUI menu, which helps you to use with Home Assistant.

ESPHome said to be more modern. However, it is questionable whether only for getting 2-3 extra features over Tasmota it worth trying with YAML configuration (there is no GUI unlike Tasmota). ESPHome can be configured with the Home Assistant add-on (also by using the terminal).

If you can manage the whole house with one or a couple of ESP32 then nothing can beat Tasmota. It is fast and easy. ESPHome is a better option when you need to use Home Assistant with a lot of devices. The response time difference between MQTT (of Tasmota) and native API (of ESPHome) is understandable when the number of devices is too many and there is overlap in automation.