We liked pretty much everything about the Nuki Smart Lock, a compact retrofit model that came out earlier this year, except for one thing: the monthly fee to use its Wi-Fi features.
Yep, that’s right: Nuki wanted its customers to pay $5.90 a month for Nuki Premium, a subscription plan that was required to access the Nuki Smart Lock remotely via Wi-Fi. The alternative was either Bluetooth connectivity, meaning you’d need to be physically near the lock to control it, or patching the Thread-enabled lock into your local network via Matter.
That charge for Wi-Fi access always seemed a little nuts, and indeed, Nuki never actually imposed the fee, instead pushing it off until September and then again to December. Now, the Austria-based company tells TechHive it will drop the fee for Nuki Premium entirely, essentially ditching the Wi-Fi paywall.
There is a slight catch, however: While the Nuki Premium fee is gone (as first reported by Android Authority), Nuki is raising the price for its smart lock to $199, a $40 price hike. It is also raising the price for its Smart Lock + Keypad 2 bundle, which will now cost $269, a $40 increase.
A Nuki spokesperson confirmed that Nuki Premium will be free for both new and existing smart lock users.
“With Nuki Premium, we aimed to create a sustainable business model that, in our opinion, reflects the value we deliver to our users,” said Nuki CEO and co-founder Martin Pansy in a statement. “However, we had to realize that the market isn’t yet ready for that. That’s why we’re returning to a one-time pricing model—without putting key smart features behind a paywall.”
Aside from dumping the Nuki Premium fee, Nuki is introducing a Guarantee Plus, which gives Nuki Smart Lock users a three-year extended warranty for $29.
Subscription fees are common in the smart home security market, but they’re generally reserved for security cameras, including cloud video storage as well as access to AI-powered detection functionality.
Nuki’s plan to charge a subscription fee to access its smart lock via Wi-Fi was unusual—a little too unusual, as it turned out.
This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart locks.