Samsung SmartThings API paid tiers are being prepared for commercial partners and individual developers. That could matter for anyone who runs a serious smart-home setup through third-party dashboards, automations, or services.
In a SmartThings developer update, Samsung said it plans to introduce paid commercial API tiers. It also plans a $4.99-per-month personal plan for non-commercial individual developers. Samsung says it will not interrupt current API usage right now. Free access will remain available through Q3. Samsung says it will not begin applying new usage limits or phasing out free access until October 2026.
The change is aimed at developers, partner services, and companies that use SmartThings as a backend layer. It is not about people simply opening the SmartThings app to turn on lights. Samsung says SmartThings now has more than 460 million registered users and hundreds of Works With SmartThings partner brands.
Samsung also plans to launch a new Developer Center and API Usage Dashboard so developers can track call volume over time. That matters because the company has not published the full commercial price sheet yet. The only confirmed number is the $4.99 monthly personal plan for non-commercial individual developers.
The dashboard should give API users current usage data and flexible time-series views. That makes the change easier to prepare for, especially for smaller projects that need to know whether routines, plug-ins, or bridges are creating more calls than expected.
For regular SmartThings app users, nothing appears to change today. The October timeline matters more for custom dashboards, rental-property systems, energy monitoring tools, and advanced automation stacks. Developers now have a few months to audit which integrations rely on Samsung’s API. They can also watch whether those tools will absorb, pass along, or avoid the new costs.
For a related smart-home read, Tech My Money recently covered how Samsung is tying Galaxy Ring data into SmartThings AC sleep automation.
