Nuki drops controversial Premium subscriptions in favor of a Smart Lock price bump

Installing a smart lock is one of those changes you don’t necessarily fully appreciate until you actually do it — being able to leave the house without carrying a set of keys is just so weirdly freeing. And if you haven’t tried it yet, now’s as good a time as any to do so. Products like Nuki’s Smart Lock make it quick and easy to add these smarts to an existing lock without needing to replace all your hardware. We’ve already been a fan of Nuki’s solutions for locks in Europe, and this past summer saw the company open its doors to US shoppers, as well — but with one key difference. And today we’ve got a critical update on that.

With Nuki’s lock business in Europe, the hardware starts at €269 — over $300. But when you bought in, that was a one-time deal, and you didn’t have to worry about any additional, ongoing costs.

For the US launch of the Nuki Smart Lock, the company drastically slashed that upfront price, letting you take home the lock alone for $159, or the lock with its wireless keypad for $229. For that, you could connect with the Nuki app over Bluetooth, and operate the lock locally with your phone.

But if you wanted to connect to the lock over Wi-Fi, and operate it or change settings when you were away from your home network, you’d now have to sign up for a $5.90/mo ($70.80/yr) Nuki Premium subscription.

Granted, Nuki Premium was positioned as more than just enabling Wi-Fi connectivity. Premium also offers administrative tools for landlords, real-time notifications, and speedy hardware replacements.

That’s an unusual assortment of features to bundle together behind a paywall like this, especially with Wi-Fi connectivity and notifications feeling like such bog-standard features with pretty much every other manufacturer. The pricing was also a tad steep, costing as much as some streaming subscriptions. And worse, this was all per-lock — if you installed more than one, you’d need to pay for a separate subscription for each.

This whole time, though, Nuki has seemed hesitant to actually start asking users to pay for Premium. When it first introduced the Smart Lock in the US, it added a tempting offer:

Early birds who sign up to Nuki Premium until September 30th will benefit from free lifetime access to all perks of the Nuki Premium program.

That sounded like quite the value. And even after that date passed, Nuki kept the offer going, pushing the deadline back to December:

Until December, 2025, you can activate Nuki Premium and get it for free. After that date, it becomes a $5.90/month subscription.

Well, December’s finally here, and we’ve got good news: You still won’t have to pay for Nuki Premium. The company has clearly been thinking long and hard about its approach here, and has decided to abandon the subscription model for many of these features.

Now, we’re not getting something for nothing, and instead of those ongoing fees, Nuki’s returning a bit to its European roots and just giving us that same sort of higher upfront pricing. Rather than $159, the Smart Lock will now sell for $199 ($269 with keypad). So for the cost of about half a year of Nuki Premium, you instead get it for life — all things considered, not a bad compromise.

In addition to this big Nuki Premium shake-up, the company is launching a US webstore and introducing a $29 three-year protection plan. Landlords can also take advantage of the new Smart Hosting Service for $69 a year, for easy integration with Airbnb, Lodgify, and Guesty accounts. That was basically a part of Premium before, so it makes sense to split that off and reserve it for people who actually need to pay for it.

I’ve been spending the past few months trying out the Nuki Smart Lock in the US — check back with Android Authority soon for that complete review.