Tado rate limiting API calls

Third party integrations
1

Just received email from tado:

We have an important update for users of our REST API, which—while never officially supported for third parties—we’ve historically left open and unrestricted. We’ve always believed in fair use, and we intend to continue supporting that principle.

The API is commonly used by third-party and open-source platforms (e.g., Home Assistant), as well as by users running their own custom scripts. Nevertheless, a small fraction of very frequent API users are currently responsible for a disproportionately high share of our server expenses.

To ensure long-term stability and to avoid restricting access for everyone, we will begin introducing daily usage limits for API calls.

Your daily quota will depend on whether you have an active tado° Auto-Assist subscription:

  • Without Auto-Assist: 100 requests/day
    A small daily quota, which should still support basic use cases that are not available via tado’s local APIs: HomeKit for V3/V3+ devices or Matter for tado° X devices. We have updated the documentation on how to access the REST API to reflect these changes.

  • With Auto-Assist: 20.000 requests/day
    This should cover even more demanding use cases, and the subscription fees enable us to offset the increased costs associated with additional server calls.

We’ve shared these changes very early in our consideration process with Home Assistant, the largest open-source software using the unofficial tado° REST API, asking them to adapt their integration to rely more on tado’s local APIs. We understand this creates challenges for community projects. Therefore, we will slowly ramp down limits over the next few months for a smooth transition.

Our goal is to strike a fair balance, ensuring that responsible use remains possible while keeping infrastructure costs under control.

Thank you for your understanding.

I think Tado went from very good solution to total crap since they initially promised free forever, then you have to pay for some features, then paid option wen’t up with price, and now with rate limits unless you pay. If they offered 1 request per minute limits, I would understand, but this is crap. They did sell the devices with different promise.

I configured Tado to use both local (Homekit) and API calls, but it seems that local integration is simply not stable. I often just don’t get any data when using local only.

With this rate limits, it could be pretty bad for me just before heating season, if I will be blocked.

Does anybody has similar experience with Homekit integration not being stable?

2

I also saw this news and was curious if not using Homekit all calls go through the cloud or if there is some way to see the number of calls being made? I fully agree this is an exceptionally bad move on Tado’s side as this is not how the product was sold. And in my personal case using HA to control Tado is far beter working than their paid features (having door and window sensors for example vs their very poor open window sensor you need to pay for or the geo location based on their app while with HA the entire family uses it, nobody else installed the Tado app). So I am curious if with this move Tado now basically broke my use-case for their product.

3

I have received the Tado announcement as well. The comment about having shared the info with HA community is promising. Is there an active public discussion about this somewhere here or elsewhere?
My interest is for older Tado devices (pre-Tado X) - thermostat and boiler control.

edit:
have done some more research and looks like HomeKit via HA )with HA acting as HomeKit bridge) is the way to go … but I was a relatively early adopter of Tado and my Tado Bridge is GW02 model which does not have HomeKit support …

edit2:
Discussion on HA Github about it

and there was a question in there about whether or not older systems with free “Auto Assist” (in other words the capability that was free from the early days to detect when away from home and turn off heating etc) and the response from Tado was that those users (which I think includes me) would get the 20,000 calls per day included without having to pay extra.
Hopefully correct.
I have also sent them a question to see if it is feasible to replace just the Tado internet bridge with a HomeKit compatible version without having to replace the rest.

1 Like
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Also worth adding here is that I read somewhere in the past week that Tado is dropping support for non-metric measurement units, which may be a concern for some.

My personal interest is in an ancient Tado infrared thermostat device, that doesn’t have Homekit or local access support AFAIK…

5

As a tado user, with some automations turning on and off heating in some areas … what does this mail mean for me?
a) I need to consider buying a paid subscription, since the HA integration performs more than 100 requests per day
b) no need to do anything, the HA integration stays below that limit
c) something else?

As a user of HA (I am a developer, but not a developer in HA) how can I easily see the number of requests that are made towards tado’s REST API? (without running tools like wireshark or the lot)

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I wonder how many API requests HA sends per day.
I only have their V2 thermostat, will this make my life uncomfortable the coming winter or not, what will be the impact if i don´t have any automations running on it, and only use it to manually change the temperature via HA, 4-6 times a day ?

Controlling it via HA is easy because everything i need is in 1 single app, instead of having to open different apps for everything I want to do.
I guess if it starts to hinder me, it is time to throw Tado out of the window, and look for a thermostat that can be controlled fully via a local API.

I also asked this question to Tado, with the clear message that if it hinders me, I will get another brand with a local API, and never consider buying Tado again, I suggest HA users having a Tado do the same, to put a bit of pressure on them.

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I hve both the Tado integration and the Homekit one active. Homekit is however not stable. Frequently devices are offline. Homekit also lacks some functionality I need to choose what kind of temperature override I want, a possibility to return to Tado automated schedule/presence and functionality to set temperature offset.

I have auto Assist, but provided by Apple without fee. So I have no clue if I’ll get the low or high rate limit. I would really like a feature complete, stable local aolution. If homekit were stable it would be okish, but that is not the case.

Matter for Tado X is even more limited by what Matter will allow. So I might need to look for alternative brands with true local control if this pans out badly.

I can fully understand cloud services aren’t free to operate, but they themselves chose a cloud heavy approach without offering a true local API. Even their schedules are cloud driven, not local. That is plain dumb and a problem if internet is out.

P.s. Homekit Device integration is less than stable for me for multiple devices, e.g. Netatmo too is not reliable. Is anyone seeing the same for multiple integrations? Maybe some one can look into why it is not reliable?

8

I saw their response on GitHub as well. Have you found any concrete info about this? Do you know how to identify if you’re one of the lucky “OG” users? I have a pretty old Tado bridge (or whatever they call their base station thing), which I’m pretty sure pre-dates Matter, but not sure about HomeKit.

I have the functionality which auto detects when I’m home/away, and I’m not paying for a subscription. I hadn’t realised that newer users have to pay for that.

When I look at Settings > Auto-Assist, I see:

Enjoy fully automated Geofencing and Open Window Detection, and let Care & Protect look after your heating system for you.

Auto-Assist is provided to you courtesy of Apple.

That’s making me feel slightly optimistic – any idea if I’m right?

I wonder if the value of my ancient Tado bridge will suddenly go through the roof :smiley:

9

Check the underside of your Tado bridge.
Mine does not have a reset button - I think the ones with HomeKit do.

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If you get Auto Assist free coutesy of Apple, why would you doubt Homekit support? :wink: I have the same as you. I have linked both Homekit via Homekit device integration, and Tado integration. I use a custom climate template integration to automatically switch from one to the other in case of failure.

Homekit however is far less stable and lacks some functionality I rely on to set the temperature offset, determine the kind of temperature override and switch back to full Tado auto functions.

11

Hah, excellent point. Confirmed by the Homekit logo I’ve just noticed stuck on the side of the bridge :person_facepalming:

So fingers crossed then the free Auto Assist means my existing integration (via the cloud API) will continue to work? I guess I’ll wait and see.

12

-“Our API can’t keep up with the number of new customers, any ideas?”
-“We could make the product worse so we don’t get more customers”

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I would hope they did what Somfy did: add a local REST API. The homekit integration is ot very reliable and not feature complete.They will earn back the investment when they get less server load.

I fully understand HA integrations are costing them a lot. But it feels weird to pay for their auto assist if you want to use HA to create your own (better) auto assist. A local API is cheaper for both parties.

1 Like
14

Couldn’t believe it when I first read it!
“We’ve always believed in fair use, and we intend to continue supporting that principle.”
what part of 100 call rate limit is fair for a product like this, when they know so many of their customers purchased this specifically for its open API.
What’s painful is it looks like HA only makes the call about 500 times a day anyway, at least that’s true in my case (just the boiler control and thermostat) so a rate limit of 1000 a day would have been fine for most people and significantly less than the current 20,000.
Buy maybe that’s not the point, maybe the point is to push us onto a subscription or off the platform altogether. idk

15

Here is a simple solution:

apple home kit device

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The link provided describes local connection to Tado as HomeKit device, the option we were discussing. Unfortunately as you may read in previous comments that connection is both unreliable and feature incomplete.

I find that quite often some valves are gone, and then reappear later. You cannot get reliable reading and automations fail if they are unlucky to trigger when devices are not present. You also don’t get as much control as over cloud API.