Template Sensor vs Helper + Automation

I’ve been slowly learning Home Assistant over the last month and have been trying different things to get a feel for how it works. Once I figured out how to create template sensors it made a few things much easier to figure out and I like that it keeps the entity and logic in one spot instead of having a few separate items to set up. However it seems almost all of my searches turn up mostly how to do things with helpers and automations to set the state.

It’s been fairly easy to figure out from one how to set up the other but is there a disadvantage to setting things up as a template sensor as it seems that’s not the most common method? Or is this something that is just person preference?

I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole and realize I made a mistake and have to redo a bunch of things.

There’s not much difference as long as the end result that you are getting is what you want.

The biggest difference to keep in mind is that template sensors don’t retain their values thru restarts where helper entities do. Templates need to be re-evaluated before they have a value.