Best Home Energy Monitors for Home Assistant UK 2026

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For most UK Home Assistant users, the Shelly Pro 3EM is the outright best whole-home energy monitor: local API, MQTT, no subscription, and a native HA integration that just works. If you have a SMETS2 smart meter, the Hildebrand Glow IHD is the smarter starting point — it reads both electricity and gas from your meter over local MQTT without touching your consumer unit. Add a TP-Link Tapo P110M for per-device monitoring and you have a complete local-control energy stack.

Hildebrand Glow IHD — Best for SMETS2 Smart Meter Households

The Glow is simultaneously an in-home display and a Consumer Access Device (CAD). That dual role is the whole point: unlike the free display your supplier handed you, the Glow connects to your SMETS2 meter via the DCC (Data Communications Company) network rather than a proprietary supplier link, so it works across all UK energy suppliers and survives a tariff switch without re-pairing.

For Home Assistant users, the key feature is its local MQTT broker. Once the device is on your network, you point it at your own Mosquitto broker and the Hildebrand Glow MQTT integration (available through HACS) pulls in real-time electricity and gas data — no cloud dependency, no polling a third-party API. Electricity updates every 10 seconds; gas updates every 30 minutes, reflecting how often the gas meter itself reports. It also reads both electricity and gas, which matters because CT clamp monitors are electricity-only — the only way to get gas data remotely is through the smart meter’s DCC connection.

Real strengths:

• Works with every UK supplier via DCC — no re-pairing if you switch
• Local MQTT means genuinely zero cloud dependency once configured
• Only way to get both electricity and gas into Home Assistant without a gas smart meter CT workaround

Real drawbacks:

• SMETS2-only in its most capable form; SMETS1 variants exist but data richness is reduced
• Initial MQTT setup requires patience — community reports of token expiry bugs with some integration forks, and the HACS installation adds steps compared to a native integration
• Gas readings update every 30 minutes, which isn’t useful for real-time automations — only electricity is near-live

The Glow is a UK-specific product tied to UK smart meter infrastructure and is not relevant to US or Irish markets. It is sold directly through the Hildebrand/Glowmarkt store — note that Hildebrand periodically operates a waitlist and may require a deposit to secure your place before dispatch. Check Amazon UK for availability when the Glowmarkt store is waitlisted.

Check price: Amazon UK

If the Glow feeds your whole-home data and you want to layer in smart thermostat control on top, see our Best Smart Thermostats for Home Assistant (Local) guide for heating automation ideas that pair well with live energy data.

Shelly Pro 3EM — Best for Power Users, Solar, and Three-Phase Homes

This is the most capable energy monitor on the list, and the one the community consistently reaches for when the monitoring requirements get serious. The Shelly Pro 3EM mounts on a DIN rail inside your consumer unit using three 120 A CT clamps — one per phase — and exposes everything over local REST API, MQTT, and an embedded web interface. No cloud required. It stores up to 60 days of 1-minute interval data on the device itself, so a temporary broadband outage costs you nothing in terms of data.

Accuracy is Class B under IEC 62053-21 — that is ±1% across the operating range — which is precise enough for utility-grade logging. Connectivity includes both 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and a wired Ethernet port, so you can hardwire it in the consumer unit and sidestep any Wi-Fi reliability concerns. The official Shelly integration in Home Assistant auto-discovers the device over the local network and exposes all per-phase voltage, current, power, and energy sensors without any YAML configuration. For a household running solar PV, an EV charger, and a heat pump simultaneously, this is the only monitor here that gives you a complete three-phase picture in real time.

The Shelly Pro 3EM is available on Amazon UK (search returns current variants including the Pro 3EM-3CT63 and Pro 3EM v2), Amazon US, and Amazon IE.

Real strengths:

• Three-phase metering at up to 120 A per phase, with four-quadrant measurement for solar import and export
• Class B (±1%) accuracy — numbers you can trust for billing comparison
• Ethernet port plus Wi-Fi; local RPC, MQTT, and WebSocket; 60 days of on-device data storage
• Native Home Assistant integration — discovered automatically, no custom components needed

Real drawbacks:

• DIN rail mounting means you need an electrician to install it inside the consumer unit — this is not a DIY job for most people
• Only three channels; no per-breaker or sub-circuit granularity without adding more hardware
• At least one UK user found it unsuitable as a grid meter for Victron battery systems due to its polling interval — worth checking if you need sub-second data for a battery inverter

Check price: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon IE

Shelly EM Gen3 — Best Mid-Range CT Clamp Monitor

Where the Pro 3EM is the professional-grade three-phase unit, the EM Gen3 is the compact single-phase option for the majority of UK homes. It supports two CT clamp channels simultaneously — useful for monitoring grid import on one channel and solar export (or an EV charger feed) on the other — and includes a dry-contact relay output that can drive a contactor, meaning the meter can actually cut the load it measures. That relay is what separates the EM Gen3 from a passive logging device: you can automate a hot water immersion heater or pool pump to switch on only when surplus solar is available, without any additional hardware.

The EM Gen3 connects to Home Assistant via the native Shelly integration using local RPC over Wi-Fi — Shelly Cloud is not required. It stores ten days of 1-minute data on the device. Current accuracy is quoted at ±2% over 1–50 A, which is acceptable for household monitoring though a step below the Pro 3EM’s Class B rating. It is single-phase only, so it cannot monitor a three-phase supply.

The EM Gen3 is available from UK smart home retailers and on Amazon UK. It is also available on Amazon US and Amazon IE.

Real strengths:

• Compact enough to fit in a wall box or beside a consumer unit; two channels covers most single-phase monitoring scenarios
• Dry-contact relay for contactor control — the monitor can act on what it reads
• Local API (RPC), MQTT, and embedded web interface; native Home Assistant integration with automatic discovery
• Bi-directional metering — reports negative power when a channel is net-exporting, ideal for solar

Real drawbacks:

• Single-phase only — cannot monitor a three-phase supply
• No Ethernet port, no Matter support; relies entirely on 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, which can be unreliable in a metal consumer unit enclosure
• Only two clamp channels and one included 50 A clamp — per-breaker monitoring requires multiple units or a different product

Check price: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon IE

TP-Link Tapo P110M — Best Budget Per-Device Monitor

Whole-home monitoring tells you how much power your house draws; per-plug monitoring tells you which appliance is doing the drawing. The Tapo P110M is a 13A UK smart plug that exposes voltage, current, and power into Home Assistant, making it the cheapest way to track individual appliances. At budget pricing per plug, putting one behind a tumble dryer, chest freezer, or EV home charger costs almost nothing relative to the insight it returns — you can trigger automations when an appliance finishes a cycle based on its power dropping, without any polling or cloud dependency if you use the native core TP-Link integration.

The P110M is Matter-certified and carries UKCA certification for the UK market. Energy monitoring data is accessible through the native tplink integration in Home Assistant, which communicates locally. The integration polls the device over the local network and exposes per-plug energy stats accurate enough for appliance-level automations. It does not require a hub.

The Tapo P110M is widely available on Amazon UK. It is also sold on Amazon US (the US model uses a different plug type — Type A/B 15A — but carries the same model name and Matter certification) and Amazon IE.

Real strengths:

• Budget price per plug — the cheapest route to per-appliance energy data in HA
• UK 13A Type G plug with UKCA certification; native Home Assistant integration, no hub required
• Exposes voltage, current, and power — enough to drive load-detection automations
• Physical button acts as a manual override regardless of network state

Real drawbacks:

• Per-device monitoring only — no whole-home visibility; you need one plug per appliance, which gets expensive at scale
• The core TP-Link integration relies on the Tapo cloud for initial setup and some users report occasional re-authentication prompts after firmware updates; there is no fully offline setup mode
• Energy monitoring via Matter (rather than the native TP-Link integration) requires Matter 1.3 firmware — earlier firmware versions do not expose energy data over Matter at all

Check price: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon IE

For a deeper look at how smart plugs with energy monitoring stack up across protocols, the Zigbee vs Matter Smart Plug comparison covers local-control trade-offs in detail. And if you run the Sonoff Zigbee ecosystem alongside your energy monitors, our Sonoff Zigbee Smart Plug Review is worth a read.

How We Chose

Every product here had to meet three criteria: confirmed availability in the UK market, a credible local-control integration with Home Assistant (no mandatory cloud subscription), and verified specs or user-reported behaviour from community forums, specialist retailer listings, or manufacturer documentation. Pricing was categorised as Budget, Mid-range, or Premium based on relative positioning across the UK market — no specific figures are quoted. Products that require cloud lock-in for core functionality, lack a credible UK distribution channel, or only work with a proprietary hub were excluded. Where a product is not realistically available on a given marketplace, that store link has been omitted rather than linked to a search with no relevant results.

FAQ

Do I need a SMETS2 smart meter to use a home energy monitor with Home Assistant?

No. CT clamp monitors like the Shelly Pro 3EM and Shelly EM Gen3 clip around your mains cables and work regardless of whether you have a smart meter at all. The Hildebrand Glow IHD is the exception — it does require a SMETS2 meter (or a compatible SMETS1 meter via DCC) because it reads data from the meter directly rather than measuring current independently. If you have a smart meter, the Glow is the easier path; if you do not, a Shelly CT clamp monitor is the way to go.

Will any of these monitors work completely offline — no internet required?

The Shelly Pro 3EM and Shelly EM Gen3 both operate fully locally: once on your LAN, the native Home Assistant integration communicates via local RPC and MQTT without any internet connection. The Hildebrand Glow IHD exposes a local MQTT broker for near-real-time data, though it does connect to Hildebrand’s servers in the background for DCC authentication — a complete internet outage may affect its DCC data feed. The Tapo P110M requires Tapo’s cloud for initial onboarding but polls locally once set up, so monitoring works without internet after setup, though re-authentication prompts can appear after firmware updates.

Can I monitor solar export as well as grid import?

Yes, with the right hardware. The Shelly Pro 3EM and Shelly EM Gen3 both support bi-directional (four-quadrant) measurement, meaning they report negative power on a channel when that circuit is net-exporting — useful for both solar generation and EV charging tracking. The Hildebrand Glow IHD also reports export data if your smart meter is configured for export measurement, which most SMETS2 meters with solar PV systems are. The Tapo P110M is a standard plug and cannot measure export at all.