Best smart thermostats UK 2026: six systems compared on price, warranty and hub cost

Quick answer: For a gas combi in an average UK semi, the tado° X wireless starter kit at £159.99 is the best buy in 2026. It ships with the hub, does OpenTherm modulation and carries a two-year warranty. Hive undercuts it at £79 for the Mini, but the hub costs another £70 on top.

We haven’t tested these units. Everything below comes from manufacturer product pages, published specifications and retail prices, all checked on 27 July 2026.

What a smart thermostat is actually worth

Start with the number that decides it. The Energy Saving Trust puts the saving from installing heating controls at around £100 a year in Great Britain and £110 in Northern Ireland. The same guide puts turning the thermostat down from 22C to 21C at about £120 a year in GB.

Against Ofgem’s October–December 2026 cap (checked September 2026), gas costs 7.97p/kWh and electricity 26.32p/kWh, with a typical dual-fuel household on £1,723 a year. So a £159 thermostat that delivers that control figure pays for itself in roughly eighteen months. That’s the good case. If your house already has a working programmable thermostat and decent radiator valves, expect a lot less, and the big wins are usually insulation and glazing rather than another box on the wall.

One caveat matters more than any feature list. A smart thermostat can’t make a badly balanced heating system efficient. It only gives you finer control over when the bad system runs.

The six systems, side by side

tado° X: the best all-rounder

tado° launched its X range in the UK at the start of November 2024. Wireless and wired starter kits are both £159.99. Both talk OpenTherm, which lets a modulating combi throttle down instead of firing flat out and cutting off, and both include a Thread border router, so no separate hub.

One thing to know before you buy. tado° puts geofencing, window detection and energy reporting behind Auto-Assist at £3.99 a month or £29.99 a year. The thermostat works without it. The features people quote when they say tado° saved them money mostly don’t.

Trustpilot had tado° at 3.5 out of 5, labelled Average, from more than 8,000 reviews when we checked on 27 July 2026. Scores move, so look before you buy. Full breakdown in our tado° review.

Hive: cheapest to start, thinnest cover

The Hive Thermostat Mini is £79 and the full Hive Thermostat is £119. Neither works without a Hive Hub, and that’s £70 if you haven’t got one. So the honest entry price is £149, not £79.

The warranty is where Hive falls down. One year as standard, against two from tado° and three on Drayton’s radiator valves. Hive sells Hive+ from £3.99 a month to extend it, which turns a warranty into a subscription. But Hive’s Trustpilot score is the best of the group, 4.1 out of 5 from more than 50,000 reviews when we checked on 27 July 2026, and the British Gas retail presence makes it the easiest to get installed.

Hive also states plainly on its own product pages that it cannot install a Hive Thermostat on a heat pump because testing isn’t complete. If you have one or are getting one, that ends the conversation. See the Hive review for the full compatibility list.

Google Nest: still on sale, no longer being built for us

In April 2025 Google said it will no longer launch new Nest thermostats in Europe, and would keep selling the 3rd generation Learning Thermostat and the Thermostat E while stocks last. Google’s stated reason: heating systems in Europe “are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes” (9to5Google, 25 April 2025).

Google also confirmed that the 1st generation (2011), 2nd generation (2012) and 2014 European Learning Thermostats stopped receiving software updates on 25 October 2025. Those units still heat a house from the dial. They no longer connect to the app.

The Learning Thermostat is still £219 on the Google Store UK and the Thermostat E is £199 (checked 27 July 2026). We wouldn’t spend it. Our reasoning is in the Nest review, with a three-way head to head at Hive vs Nest vs tado°.

Drayton Wiser: zoning without a monthly fee

Wiser is Schneider Electric’s system and it does the thing the others charge for. Kit 1 starts at £195, Kit 3 is £299, and the multi-room kits, which include two radiator thermostats, are £309. No subscription. The radiator thermostats are £56.50 at list, run on two AA cells and carry a three-year extended warranty, the longest of anything still in production here. They were discounted to £33.90 when we checked on 27 July 2026.

It’s the pick for a larger house where you want room-by-room control and hate recurring charges. The app is less polished than tado°’s. We compare the two in Drayton Wiser vs tado°.

Honeywell Home evohome: most zones, oldest hardware

evohome, sold by Resideo under the Honeywell Home brand, still does more zoning than anything else on this page. One controller times and temperature-controls up to twelve heating zones, and each HR92 radiator controller takes up to six time periods a day. The Essentials Pack is £384.99 and individual HR92 controllers run £66 to £69 at UK merchants.

But Resideo’s own EMEA page for the HR92 now says it’s discontinued and no longer available to buy (checked 27 July 2026), while trade stockists still list it in stock. That’s a supply risk on a system where every extra room needs another valve head. Detail in the evohome review.

What we’d buy

• Gas combi, three-bed semi, one heating zone: tado° X wireless starter kit, £159.99. OpenTherm support and a two-year warranty for less than a Nest.
• Tightest budget and you already have a Hive Hub from a British Gas install: Hive Thermostat Mini at £79. Otherwise the £70 hub kills the price advantage.
• Larger house, several rooms you actually want on different schedules, no appetite for subscriptions: Drayton Wiser multi-room kit at £309.
• You already own part of an evohome system: stay with it and buy spare HR92 heads now while merchants have stock.
• Heat pump: none of the above as your main control. See smart thermostats for heat pumps and how heat pump controls differ.

Older, leaky houses are where control gains show up biggest. They cool fast and reheat slowly, so the schedule does more work, and we took that apart in smart thermostats in older homes. Before you spend on controls, sanity-check the rest of the job with the cost calculator and how we calculate costs.

FAQs

Do smart thermostats really save money?

The Energy Saving Trust figure for installing heating controls is around £100 a year in Great Britain. That assumes you had poor control before. Replacing an already-working programmable thermostat with a smart one saves far less, and most of the reported saving comes from heating fewer rooms for fewer hours.

Do I need a subscription?

Not for basic heating control on any system here. tado° charges £3.99 a month for Auto-Assist geofencing and reporting, Hive charges from £3.99 a month for Hive+ warranty extension, and Drayton Wiser and evohome charge nothing.

Can I fit one myself?

A like-for-like battery thermostat swap is usually within reach of a competent DIYer. Anything involving mains wiring at the boiler, a new receiver or a system boiler with a hot water cylinder should go to a qualified heating engineer. And Google recommends professional installation for the Nest Learning Thermostat.