Tado

Tado

Basic information
Founded	2011
Legal structure	Private
Industry	Automation Industry
Official website	https://www.tado.com

Tado° GmbH is a German technology company founded in 2011 by Christian Deilmann, Johannes Schwarz and Valentin Sawadski.

Consumer impact summary

Tado has made inconvenient changes that negatively impact the consumer. Such changes include:

• Requiring payment for previous app features that were free to use on the term of sale
• Charging users a subscription model to use basic functionality of the app
• Using unfair psychology practices to "test" if users would pay for something that was free
• Unethical gathering of user information for a fake paywall
• Silencing criticism by falsely flagging reviews made by concerned consumers

Controversies

User testing for mandatory paid subscription into Tado Smart Thermostat app

Main Article: User testing for mandatory paid subscription into Tado Smart Thermostat app

In February of 2025, Tado had introduced new terms for users via app notification. The general premise of the change is that the app would be pay-walling features that were free upon purchasing the initial product. Many users refused to accept the new terms only to find out the new changes was a scheme fabricated by Tado to "test" if users were willing to pay for features that were already free within the app.

Tado's Efforts to Remove Negative Trustpilot Reviews

Sub Article: Tado's Efforts to Remove Negative Trustpilot Reviews

This move agitated consumers to leave review warnings to future consumers about the sellers untrustworthy business behavior. Instead of addressing the feedback Tado has mass flagged reviews warning uses about the changes as defamatory/false. Tado has sent a very clear message that it is not concerned about the quality of the product or the consumer's rights as they value profits above all else.

Tado limits API quota without a subscription

On 2025-09-03, Tado published a statement on Facebook (archive) notifying people that without the Auto-Assist subscription, REST API calls would be limited to 100/day, possibly affecting Home Assistant users.

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.

Warm regards, Your tado° Team