What a smart home costs per year in Canada, line by line

Hardware is the smallest surprise

The basket is $590 before tax at the example prices used across this site. Kept 5 years, that is $118 a year. Kept 3 years, because a hub was retired or an app was replaced, it is about $197 a year. Nothing about the devices changed between those two lines; only the support window did.

That is why the useful question before buying is not whether $590 is a fair price but whether this ecosystem will still be running in 2031. The choose guide on this site sets out the four checks that answer it, and the shortest of them is reading the date on the most recent firmware release note.

Resale barely exists for this category, so unlike a car or an appliance there is no residual value to subtract. Assume the hardware line is the full purchase price divided by the years you keep it, and treat anything you recover as a bonus.

Standby is small per device and real per house

Smart home devices are never off. A bulb waiting for a command, a plug listening on Wi-Fi and a hub holding a mesh together all draw power continuously, and the arithmetic is the same for every one of them: watts multiplied by 8,760 hours gives kilowatt-hours a year.

One watt drawn continuously is 8.76 kWh a year, which at an assumed 15 cents per kWh is $1.31. The whole 14-device basket, on the draws assumed in the table below, comes to 36 W, which is about 315 kWh and roughly $47 a year. That is less than the camera subscription and more than most people expect.

No EnerGuide label exists for this category. Natural Resources Canada mandates the label on eight appliance categories and makes it voluntary on five heating and cooling ones; bulbs, plugs, hubs, speakers and cameras are on neither list. The only figure you can work from is the rated power on the device's own plate, and a plug-in meter will usually read lower than the rating because the rating is a maximum.

The subscription is usually the biggest line

Two cameras on one cloud plan at an example $12 a month is $144 a year. That is more than the hardware line and three times the electricity line, and it is the only one of the four that keeps charging after you stop using the devices.

Canadian law has something direct to say about how that fee is advertised. The Competition Bureau treats drip pricing as a false or misleading representation: promoting a price that is not attainable because of fixed charges or fees the buyer must pay is against the law, unless the charge is one imposed by an Act of Parliament or a legislature, such as sales tax. A camera whose basic function needs a paid plan should be advertised at a price that includes it.

The practical defence is to ask what the device does with the plan cancelled. A camera that keeps live view and loses history is a different purchase from one that shows a blank screen. Write the answer next to the price before comparing two models, because at $144 a year the plan decides the ranking far more often than the sensor does.

• Example camera cloud plan: $12 a month, which is $144 a year and $720 over 5 years
• Ask what remains without the plan: live view, local recording to a card, or nothing
• A mandatory fee has to be in the advertised price under the Competition Act; GST/HST does not
• Cancelling a plan does not recover the hardware, so count the plan and the hardware as one purchase

Tax at the till, and tax at the border

Canadian shelf prices exclude sales tax, which is federal plus provincial and is added when you pay. On the $590 basket the Canada Revenue Agency's rate table gives $29.50 in the provinces and territories at 5%, $76.70 in Ontario at 13%, $82.60 in Nova Scotia at 14% since 1 April 2025, and $88.50 in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island at 15%. Several provinces in the 5% row also charge their own retail sales tax, which the federal GST/HST table does not cover.

Ordering from abroad moves the same tax to the border and adds a second question. The Canada Border Services Agency's courier imports remission order makes goods shipped by courier from the United States or Mexico free of customs duty at a value for duty of $150 or less, and free of sales and excise taxes at $40 or less. For goods from anywhere else the courier threshold is $20, above which both duty and tax can apply.

So a $35 sensor from a United States seller normally arrives with neither duty nor tax, while the same $35 sensor from a seller outside the United States and Mexico is over the $20 line. A $120 hub from a United States seller is under the $150 duty threshold but over the $40 tax threshold, so expect the tax plus whatever handling fee the courier charges. The landed-cost calculator on this site takes those three thresholds as inputs.

Putting the year together

On the figures above, a 14-device smart home kept 5 years with one camera plan costs about $309 a year before tax: $118 of hardware, $144 of subscription and $47 of electricity. That is $25.75 a month, and the subscription alone is $144 of the $309.

Add the HST once, in Ontario, and the five-year total becomes $666.70 of hardware plus $720 of subscription plus $235 of electricity, which is $1,621.70, or about $324 a year. The tax moves the annual figure by roughly $15; the support window moves it by nearly $80.

Change one input at a time and the ranking holds in almost every household: subscription first, hardware second, electricity third, tax fourth. A cheaper hub rarely rescues an expensive plan, and the fastest saving available is usually a camera that records to a card.

Before you buy

• Write down the hardware total and divide it by the number of years you expect to keep the ecosystem
• Add up the rated watts of every device that is never switched off, then multiply by 8,760 hours
• Use the electricity rate printed on your own bill rather than a national assumption
• List every monthly or yearly fee and multiply it by 12 before comparing two products
• Add GST/HST at your own province's rate to any shelf price before comparing it with an online one
• Check the $40 and $150 courier thresholds before ordering from the United States, and the $20 threshold from elsewhere
• Re-run the total once a year, because plans change price more often than hardware does

Questions readers ask

Is 15 cents per kWh the right rate to use?

It is the assumption used throughout this guide so the arithmetic is visible, not a published Canadian average. Residential electricity rates differ substantially between provinces and between time-of-use bands, so the figure on your own bill is the right one. Put it into the running-energy calculator with the 36 W total and you get your own version of the $47 line in about a minute.

Does leaving smart plugs on standby cost more than the devices they switch off?

Rarely, but it is worth checking. A smart plug drawing 2 W costs $2.63 a year at 15 cents per kWh. If the thing plugged into it draws 5 W of standby that you now switch off for 12 hours a day, you save about 22 kWh, which is more than the plug uses. A plug on an appliance with no standby draw is a net cost.

Why is the subscription bigger than the hardware?

Because hardware is paid once and divided by 5 years, while a plan is paid 60 times over the same period. Two cameras on a $12 monthly plan reach $720 across 5 years, against $160 for the cameras themselves at the example price. That ratio is why cancelling the plan, rather than changing the camera, is usually the lever that moves the bill.

Do I pay GST/HST on something shipped from the United States?

Usually yes, above a low threshold. The Canada Border Services Agency's courier remission order frees goods from the United States or Mexico from sales and excise taxes at a value for duty of $40 or less, and from customs duty at $150 or less. Above $40 the tax applies, and the courier will normally add its own handling fee on top of whatever is assessed.

How much does the tax rate change the decision?

On this basket it is $59 between the lowest and highest bands: $29.50 at 5% against $88.50 at 15%. That is meaningful once, at purchase, and then never again. Over 5 years the camera subscription is $720, which is more than twelve times the whole spread between the cheapest and dearest provincial tax on the hardware.

Sources

1. Canada Revenue Agency — GST/HST rate by province and territory — checked 2026-11-03
2. Competition Bureau Canada — Drip pricing and unattainable prices — checked 2026-11-03
3. Canada Border Services Agency — Memorandum D8-2-16, Courier Imports Remission Order — checked 2026-11-03
4. Natural Resources Canada — EnerGuide label for appliances and room air conditioners — checked 2026-11-03