Smart home hubs and IoT devices are notoriously vulnerable on your network. A hub-level VPN encrypts all traffic at the router or Raspberry Pi, covering every lightbulb, thermostat, and camera without configuring each one individually. We compared the four strongest options — PiVPN, WireGuard, OpenVPN, and ZeroTier — across protocol performance, deployment difficulty, and latency for hub responsiveness.
Your smart home hub — whether it's a Home Assistant Raspberry Pi, a Hubitat, or a SmartThings hub — talks to the internet constantly. Firmware updates, cloud commands, voice assistant pings. The problem? Most IoT devices ship with weak security, no encryption, and no way to install a VPN client themselves.3
A hub-level VPN fixes that. By routing all traffic through an encrypted tunnel at the router or the hub itself, every device on your network gets privacy protection without you touching a single lightbulb's settings.3
Here's what we recommend, ranked by how well they fit a smart home setup.
| Pick | Best For | Protocol | Deployment |
|---|---|---|---|
| PiVPN | Easiest setup on Raspberry Pi | WireGuard or OpenVPN | Self-hosted via installer |
| WireGuard | Speed & low latency | WireGuard | Self-hosted or via PiVPN |
| OpenVPN | Firewall bypass (TCP 443) | OpenVPN | Self-hosted or via PiVPN |
| ZeroTier | Mesh networking, no port forwarding | Custom | Cloud-orchestrated mesh |
If your smart home hub runs on a Raspberry Pi, PiVPN is the simplest way to get a VPN running. It's an automated installer script that handles certificate generation, firewall rules, and client configs for you.1
PiVPN isn't a protocol itself — it's a deployment tool that wraps either WireGuard or OpenVPN under the hood.1 That means you get the speed of WireGuard or the compatibility of OpenVPN, with none of the command-line headache.
Why it fits a smart home: Low setup friction. You run one command, answer a few prompts, and your hub becomes a VPN server that every IoT device can route through.
Trade-off: PiVPN is Raspberry Pi–focused. If your hub isn't a Pi, you'll need a different deployment method.
WireGuard is the modern protocol (released 2016) that's dramatically faster and leaner than OpenVPN.2 It uses just 4,000 lines of kernel code, which means lower CPU overhead — important when your Raspberry Pi hub is already juggling automations and sensor data.
Why it fits a smart home: Smart home responsiveness matters. A door sensor trigger → light-on automation shouldn't have a 500ms VPN tax. WireGuard's minimal overhead keeps latency in the single milliseconds.2
Trade-off: Some restrictive networks block WireGuard's UDP port. If you're setting this up behind a corporate or school firewall, you might need the TCP fallback that OpenVPN offers.
OpenVPN has been the standard since 2001.2 It's slower than WireGuard on a Raspberry Pi, but it runs over TCP port 443 — the same port as HTTPS traffic — which means it works through almost any firewall.
Why it fits a smart home: If you travel and want to check your home cameras from a hotel or office network, OpenVPN is more likely to connect without issues. It's also the most widely documented protocol, so troubleshooting is easier.
Trade-off: Higher CPU usage and slower throughput on a Pi. Expect roughly half the speed of WireGuard on the same hardware.2
ZeroTier isn't a traditional VPN. It creates a virtual software-defined network (a "mesh") where all your devices can talk to each other as if they're on the same LAN — even if they're behind different NATs or firewalls.
Why it fits a smart home: No port forwarding required. No public IP needed. You install the ZeroTier client on your hub and your phone, and they find each other through ZeroTier's cloud orchestrator. Great for remote access to Home Assistant or a security camera feed.
Trade-off: It's not a full tunnel VPN by default — traffic to the internet doesn't automatically route through the hub unless you configure it that way. It's best for remote access, not for anonymizing all IoT traffic.
| If you want… | Pick |
|---|---|
| One-command setup on a Raspberry Pi hub | PiVPN |
| The fastest possible tunnel with low CPU use | WireGuard |
| To connect from restrictive networks (hotels, offices) | OpenVPN |
| Remote access to your hub without port forwarding | ZeroTier |
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