When the sprinklers run through a storm or the awning stays out in a 40 mph gust, your weather data is usually the weak link. A forecast is a guess about your postcode. A backyard station is a measurement, but only if its readings reach Home Assistant without a detour through somebody’s cloud. That path differs far more between Ecowitt, Tempest, Ambient and Davis than any accuracy figure on their spec sheets.
We ranked the best weather stations for Home Assistant by that path first, then by sensors and price. Ecowitt gateways push to a local webhook, and Tempest broadcasts over UDP on your LAN. Davis needs a WeatherLink Live and a HACS integration, while Ambient’s built-in integration runs through Ambient’s cloud. Every price, spec and integration detail below was checked against the makers’ pages, the Home Assistant integration docs and Amazon US in November 2026.
Choosing a weather station by how it reaches Home Assistant
If you only read one section, read this one. Ecowitt is the default answer for most homes because it is the cheapest local option. It also has the broadest and cheapest add-on catalogue behind one gateway. The others earn a place for specific reasons:
- Best overall: Ecowitt Wittboy GW3001 (about $210). WS90 7-in-1 array, Wi-Fi plus Ethernet gateway, local push into core Home Assistant.
- Best budget: Ecowitt GW1200 with WS85 (about $130). Wind and rain only, so plan on an outdoor thermometer.
- Best with a display: Ecowitt WS3900 kit (about $190). A wall console that both Ecowitt integrations support.
- Best all-in-one: WeatherFlow Tempest (about $349). No moving parts, no battery swaps, lightning detection, UDP straight to Home Assistant.
- Best for a long-lived mast: Davis WeatherLink Live (about $405) with a Vantage Vue sensor suite. The most expensive route, and local only through HACS.
Ambient’s WS-2902 is not on that list on purpose. It’s a capable station at a fair price, but Home Assistant’s own integration for it is cloud push. A dropped internet link stops your data even though the console sits on your desk. It gets its own section further down for owners who already have one.
The arrows matter more than the boxes. Ecowitt and Tempest both push, so a new reading lands in Home Assistant as soon as the gateway or hub sends it. That is what you want for a rain-start or gust automation.
Davis is pulled instead. A HACS integration asks the WeatherLink Live for current conditions on port 80, so freshness depends on how often it polls. Ambient goes out to the Ambient Weather Network and back, which needs your API key, your application key and a working internet connection.
Comparing the stations side by side
Read the integration column first. Its IoT class comes from each integration’s own page on home-assistant.io. Prices are Amazon US bands from late October 2026, so check the live price before you order.
| Station | Price band | Path into Home Assistant | Wind and rain sensors | Display |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ecowitt Wittboy GW3001 | about $210 | Ecowitt (core), local push; or Ecowitt’s HACS poller | Ultrasonic wind, haptic rain, plus UV and solar | No, gateway only |
| Ecowitt GW1200 + WS85 | about $130 | Ecowitt (core), local push; or HACS poller | Ultrasonic wind, haptic rain, no temperature | No |
| Ecowitt WS3900 + WS85 + WN32 | about $190 | Ecowitt (core), local push; or HACS poller | Ultrasonic wind, haptic rain, WN32 thermo-hygrometer | Yes, 7.5-inch LCD |
| WeatherFlow Tempest | about $349 | WeatherFlow (core), local push over UDP | Sonic wind, haptic rain, lightning, UV, solar | No, hub only |
| Ambient WS-2902 | about $200 | Ambient Weather Station (core), cloud push | Wind, rain, UV, solar radiation | Yes, colour LCD |
| Davis Vantage Vue + WeatherLink Live | about $830 to $850 | HACS only: local poll of the WeatherLink Live, or the Davis cloud API | Wind and rain, no UV or solar on the Vue | No, unless you buy the Console |
Two things stand out once you read the table. The cheapest stations are also the most local ones, because Ecowitt hardware feeds a core integration that Home Assistant ships. And Davis costs roughly four times the Ecowitt pick for fewer sensor types. You pay for the sensor suite’s reputation and parts supply, not for anything Home Assistant does with the data.
Starting with the Ecowitt Wittboy GW3001
We’d put the GW3001 (about $210 on Amazon) on most roofs first. It pairs the WS90 7-in-1 array (temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, rain, UV and solar light) with the newer GW3000 gateway, and the gateway is the part that decides how well it lives with Home Assistant.
Ecowitt gives the GW3000 Wi-Fi and Ethernet, a micro-SD slot for local logging and a swappable external antenna, and it powers from USB-C at 5 V. Put it on Ethernet if you can. The gateway posts each reading to a webhook that the core Ecowitt integration creates. That integration is classed Local Push, and nothing in the chain needs a cloud account.
Out on the mast, the WS90 reports every 8.8 seconds over 915 MHz in the US. It uses an ultrasonic anemometer and a haptic rain sensor, and it runs on its solar panel with two AA cells as backup.
The gateway also takes a long list of add-on sensors, and that is the real reason Ecowitt wins this guide. Ecowitt’s GW3000 page lists up to 16 soil moisture probes, eight leaf-wetness sensors, eight temperature probes, four leak sensors and one WH57 lightning detector. All of them report through the same box, so you get one gateway and one integration for every sensor in the garden.
Skip it if rain totals drive money decisions, such as irrigation for a large lawn. Ecowitt’s own shop page tells WS90 buyers who need more accurate rain data to add the WH40 tipping-bucket gauge. A haptic sensor estimates rain from drop impacts rather than collecting it.
Ecowitt’s older Wittboy GW2001 bundles the same WS90 with the GW2000 gateway at a similar price. Its Amazon listing was not showing plain in-stock when we checked, so the GW3001 is the one you should order.
Spending less with the GW1200 and WS85 kit
At about $130, the GW1200 with WS85 kit is the cheapest way to get local wind and rain into Home Assistant. It is also the pick most likely to disappoint you if you skim the listing. The WS85 array in this kit does not measure outdoor temperature or humidity at all.
Ecowitt lists the WS85 as a 3-in-1: haptic rain plus ultrasonic wind speed and direction. It reports every 8.5 seconds, carries an IPX5 rating and gets a 1-year backup battery life from two AA cells. Its solar panel charges the array and doesn’t feed a light sensor, so there’s no UV or illuminance either. The GW1200 gateway adds indoor temperature, humidity and pressure, but it is Wi-Fi only.
That makes the kit a good fit when you already get outdoor temperature from a Zigbee sensor or an ESP32 running ESPHome. Then you only need wind and rain for awning and irrigation automations, and our picks of irrigation controllers for Home Assistant cover the watering side. If you don’t, add an Ecowitt outdoor thermo-hygrometer to the same gateway or step up to a kit above. The GW1200 is on both the core and the official HACS integration lists, so you lose nothing in Home Assistant by starting small.
Adding a display with the WS3900 kit
A Home Assistant dashboard is a fine weather screen until someone in your house wants a readout on the kitchen wall. A tablet that falls asleep doesn’t count. The WS3900 kit answers that for about $190, and we’d pick it because both Ecowitt integrations support its console.
Inside the box you get the WS3900 console with the same WS85 array as the budget pick, plus a WN32 outdoor thermometer and hygrometer. That covers the temperature gap the GW1200 kit leaves. The console has a 7.5-inch LCD, indoor temperature, humidity and pressure sensors, Wi-Fi, and DC or three AA cells for power. It posts to the Home Assistant webhook the same way a gateway does, and Ecowitt’s own HACS integration lists the WS3900 as supported.
The alternative is the Wittboy Pro HP2564 (about $300), which pairs the full WS90 array with a 7-inch colour HP2560 console. It is the better station. But Ecowitt’s compatibility table for its official HACS integration lists the HP2560 as not supported, so that console only reaches Home Assistant through the core webhook. Skip the HP2564 if you were counting on the HACS poller to get around an HTTPS-only Home Assistant (covered at the end).
Going all-in-one with the WeatherFlow Tempest
The Tempest (about $349 on Amazon) suits the house where nobody wants to climb a ladder twice. It is a single sensor with no moving parts. Four solar panels charge a 1300 mWh lithium titanate battery that Tempest says never needs replacing. It also adds a lightning detector, which no Ecowitt array here has without an extra sensor.
Tempest’s spec sheet lists a sonic anemometer sampled every 3 seconds, a haptic rain sensor and lightning detection out to 40 km. UV, solar radiation and illuminance are covered too. Everything reaches the hub over 915 MHz in the US, at up to 300 m line of sight.
Tempest’s shop says the Wi-Fi hub comes with every complete station, and the hub is the piece Home Assistant listens to. The WeatherFlow integration is Local Push over UDP port 50222, with no account or token needed. Tempest charges no subscription for its own app and forecasts either.
The UDP design has two costs. Home Assistant has to sit on the same subnet as the hub, so a hub on an IoT VLAN and Home Assistant on a server VLAN won’t see each other without a relay. The integration docs also warn that the hub broadcasts each update once and never resends it. A Home Assistant box on Wi-Fi can miss updates where a wired one won’t.
Wi-Fi on the hub is 2.4 GHz only. If you want Tempest’s forecast data as well, the separate WeatherFlow Cloud integration adds it with a personal access token. You can run the two side by side.
Skip the Tempest if your mount will shake. Tempest’s spec sheet notes that errant vibration can affect the haptic rain reading. Its community forum has several threads where a wobbly pole or fence mount logged rain on dry, gusty days. It also needs at least four hours of sun every two weeks to stay charged, which rules out a shaded north wall.
Living with Ambient’s cloud on the WS-2902
The WS-2902 (about $200 on Amazon) is a popular first station, and if one is already on your roof there’s no reason to replace it. We just wouldn’t buy one new for Home Assistant in 2026, because the built-in path runs through Ambient’s servers.
Ambient’s page lists the current WS-2902D with a colour LCD console. It shows indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, wind, rain, UV, solar radiation and pressure, and the Ambient Weather Network account is free. Home Assistant’s Ambient Weather Station integration is classed Cloud Push and needs both an API key and an application key from your Ambient dashboard. Its docs point you to ecowitt2mqtt or to Ecowitt hardware if you want local data.
There is a local route for owners. Ambient consoles on firmware 4.2.8 or later can upload to a custom server, and the community awnet_local HACS integration with its AWNET add-on listens for that upload. Its README lists the WS-2902A to D, WS-2000 and WS-5000 as working.
Treat it as a way to keep an existing station useful, not as a reason to buy one, because it’s a community project rather than a core integration. Ambient consoles speak their own upload format, so don’t expect to point a WS-2902 at the core Ecowitt webhook.
Paying for Davis with the WeatherLink Live
Davis is the brand weather hobbyists keep for a decade, and the price shows it. The trap is the Vantage Vue sold on Amazon as the 6357 “Professional Weather Station”. It is the outdoor sensor suite only, with no console or gateway, so on its own it sends data to nothing on your network.
The WeatherLink Live is the piece that makes Davis work with Home Assistant. It connects over Wi-Fi or Ethernet, receives up to eight Davis transmitters, and exposes a documented local API. The HTTP /v1/current_conditions endpoint on port 80 can be polled as often as every 10 seconds, according to Davis.
There is also a real-time UDP broadcast on port 22222 every 2.5 seconds. A client has to keep re-requesting it, because it stops after 20 minutes by default and after 24 hours at most. The Vue itself reports every 2.5 seconds and covers temperature, humidity, wind and rain, with no UV or solar sensors.
Home Assistant has no core Davis integration, so you’re choosing between HACS projects. The ha-weatherlink-live integration polls the WeatherLink Live locally and offers real-time wind and rain over UDP. It requires Home Assistant 2026.7 or newer. The weatherlink integration in the HACS default list uses the Davis cloud API instead. Its README notes that the free Basic WeatherLink tier only updates every 15 minutes, which is too slow for gust automations.
Budget about $850 for a working pair: the Vantage Vue sensor suite is $425 direct from Davis, and its Amazon listing was not in stock when we checked. The WeatherLink Live is $425 from Davis or about $405 on Amazon, where stock was thin. Skip Davis unless you value the sensor suite’s track record over sensor count, because the Ecowitt pick measures more for a quarter of the money.
Growing an Ecowitt gateway with soil and lightning sensors
Once an Ecowitt gateway is on the network, every extra sensor is a cheap add rather than a new integration. The WH51 soil moisture probe is the one most Home Assistant gardeners reach for first, at about $24 each on Amazon.
Ecowitt’s WH51 page lists one AA cell, a 70-second update interval, IP66 and two-point calibration, and a gateway accepts up to 16 of them. The WH51 cannot work alone, so you need one of the gateways above. Each probe shows up in Home Assistant as its own soil moisture entity. A July 2026 core change also added soil conductivity support for Ecowitt sensors that report it. The add-ons worth knowing about:
- WH51 soil moisture, up to 16 per gateway
- WH40 tipping-bucket rain gauge, for accurate totals
- WH57 lightning detector, one per gateway
- WH55 leak sensors, up to four
Ecowitt’s core integration docs name the first three and list leak sensors as an entity type. If you’d rather keep leak detection on a separate system with a shutoff valve, our guide to water leak sensors and shutoff valves for Home Assistant covers that side. The air quality monitors guide covers indoor CO2 and PM2.5. A spare GW3000 gateway (about $60) on its own is handy for a detached greenhouse out of radio range.
Checking these before you buy
Most bad weather station purchases for Home Assistant come from a mismatch between the box and the house, not from a bad sensor. Run through these before you order:
- How Home Assistant is reached: plain HTTP on the LAN, or HTTPS only
- Which VLAN the gateway or hub will sit on
- Whether the array measures temperature, or only wind and rain
- Haptic rain versus a tipping bucket, if watering depends on it
- Sun on the mounting spot, and how firm the pole is
- The radio band for your country (US kits ship on 915 MHz)
Settle the first two before you compare sensors, because they decide whether the station talks to Home Assistant at all. The mounting questions decide whether the data is any good once it arrives. If you’re still choosing the box Home Assistant runs on, our mini PC picks for Home Assistant all have wired Ethernet. That helps the Tempest’s UDP broadcasts in particular. A wall tablet for the dashboard covers the display a gateway-only kit leaves out.
Keeping the station reporting after the first storm
A weather station that worked on day one usually stops for one of a handful of reasons, and each brand has its own. The one that catches most Ecowitt owners is HTTPS. The core integration’s docs say plainly that Ecowitt devices do not support HTTPS, so a Home Assistant instance that only answers on HTTPS never receives the gateway’s posts.
Home Assistant’s forum thread from the 2023.5 release is full of owners who lost data that way. The documented fix is to keep plain HTTP reachable on the LAN alongside HTTPS, for example through a reverse proxy or the NGINX add-on serving both. Ecowitt’s own HACS integration avoids the problem by polling the gateway’s local API instead. That’s why it’s worth installing if your gateway is on its supported list.
Winter is the next test. The WS90 manual recommends lithium AA cells for cold climates and says to avoid alkaline. The array’s snow-melting heater needs Ecowitt’s optional 12 V extension supply, according to the same manual. On a Tempest, wind accuracy degrades below minus 30 C, and the haptic sensor counts rain only, not snow or hail. If your Tempest suddenly reports rain on a dry, windy day, Tempest’s forum threads point at the mount rather than the sensor.
Network changes break the other two. A Tempest that drops out after a VLAN rework usually means Home Assistant and the hub ended up on different subnets, because the UDP broadcast on port 50222 doesn’t cross a router. A Davis setup on ha-weatherlink-live keeps polling port 80 happily. Its real-time wind feed, though, depends on the integration re-requesting the UDP stream. A gap in gust data while temperature keeps updating points at that stream, not at the station.
Once outdoor temperature is flowing into Home Assistant, heating is the obvious next automation. Our thermostat guide applies the same local-first test to that side of the house.
