UniFi Protect vs. Frigate NVR: My Experience Running Both

When it comes to home security cameras, most people pick a system and stick with it. I've ended up running two completely different setups—one at each of my properties—and that accident of circumstance has turned into one of the most useful comparisons I've been able to make in my smart home journey.

At Property One, I have UniFi Protect running on a UniFi NVR, with a UniFi doorbell and a couple of external cameras.

At Property Two, I run Frigate NVR in a Proxmox LXC container, paired with Tapo cameras, a Reolink WiFi doorbell, and a USB Coral TPU for AI-powered object detection.

These two systems couldn't be more different in philosophy. One is a polished, closed ecosystem. The other is a DIY powerhouse. Having lived with both for a while, here's my honest take.

UniFi Protect: Smooth, Reliable, and Locked Down

I'll say this clearly: UniFi Protect is excellent. If you want a camera system that you genuinely never have to think about, it's hard to beat.

Setup is effortless. Plug in a camera, open the app, and it's there. The interface is clean and well-designed. Remote access just works—no VPNs, no reverse proxies, no port forwarding. The UniFi app handles it all. I've never had a Protect camera drop offline, which is more than I can say for some of the mixed-vendor experiments I've tried elsewhere.

Where UniFi Protect Wins

• It just works. No RTSP streams to configure, no YAML, no weird compatibility issues between camera brands.
• Remote access is seamless. The UniFi app gives you secure remote access out of the box. Genuinely useful when you're not a networking nerd who enjoys setting up Tailscale.
• Rock-solid reliability. Cameras stay online. Recordings are there when you need them. I never worry about it.
• Home Assistant integration exists. The UniFi Protect integration in HA is solid—you get camera feeds, motion events, and doorbell triggers without any hacking around.

Where It Falls Short

• Expensive, and you're locked in. UniFi cameras aren't cheap, and you can only use UniFi cameras with UniFi Protect. If you want to add a budget Tapo or Reolink camera, you're out of luck.
• AI detection is basic. Person and vehicle detection is there, but it's not particularly configurable. You get what Ubiquiti gives you.
• No local-only option without effort. By default, remote access routes through Ubiquiti's cloud infrastructure. You can self-host, but that's not the out-of-box experience.

Frigate NVR: The AI-Powered Tinkerer's Dream

Frigate is a different beast entirely. It's an open-source NVR built specifically for Home Assistant integration and AI-powered object detection. It runs locally, it's camera-agnostic, and if you're willing to put in the setup time, it's remarkably powerful.

My setup: Frigate runs as an LXC container on a Proxmox host (a Beelink EQ12 mini PC), pulling RTSP streams from three Tapo cameras and a Reolink WiFi doorbell. The secret weapon is a USB Coral TPU—a small accelerator that handles Frigate's object detection entirely in hardware, leaving host CPU utilisation almost untouched even with multiple camera streams being analysed in real time.

Without the Coral, Frigate's AI detection chews through CPU cycles fast. With it, detection is fast, efficient, and scales well as you add cameras.

Where Frigate Wins

• Works with almost any camera. If it speaks RTSP, Frigate can handle it. Tapo, Reolink, Hikvision, Amcrest—mix and match freely. No ecosystem lock-in.
• Genuinely smart object detection. Frigate doesn't just detect motion—it tells you what moved. Person, vehicle, animal, or custom objects. You can trigger Home Assistant automations based on these events: lights on when a person is detected at the driveway, a notification when a vehicle arrives but no person follows, and so on.
• Deep Home Assistant integration. Frigate publishes events to MQTT, and the Home Assistant integration is excellent. Every detected event becomes a triggerable entity. This is where it really pulls ahead.
• Cost. The camera hardware cost for my Frigate setup is a fraction of what equivalent UniFi cameras would cost. I built out the whole foundation—Proxmox host, cameras, Coral TPU, Frigate—for less than just the UniFi camera hardware alone.
• Fully local. No cloud involved. Everything stays on your network.

Where It Gets Complicated

• Setup takes real effort. Expect to write YAML. Expect to spend time getting camera streams configured correctly. Expect some trial and error with detection zones and sensitivity settings. It's nowhere near plug-and-play.
• No built-in remote access. If you want to check your cameras from outside your home network, you'll need to set up a VPN (I use Tailscale) or a reverse proxy. I've integrated it into Home Assistant's remote access, which works well—but it's extra steps.
• Ongoing maintenance. Frigate updates regularly and occasionally has breaking config changes. You need to stay engaged.

The Coral TPU: Worth It?

Short answer: absolutely yes, if you're running Frigate with more than one or two cameras.

The USB Coral TPU offloads all of Frigate's object detection inference from your CPU to dedicated ML hardware. On a typical frame, detection goes from taking tens of milliseconds of CPU time to a few milliseconds on the Coral—and you can process many more frames per second as a result. With three cameras running, my Proxmox host's CPU barely registers Frigate's presence.

There's also a PCIe version if you have a machine with a spare slot, which is faster still. For most home setups, the USB version is plenty.

Home Assistant Integration: How They Compare

Both systems integrate with Home Assistant, but the depth and flexibility differ significantly.

UniFi Protect gives you camera entities, motion sensors, doorbell button triggers, and smart detection events (person/vehicle). It's clean and reliable. You can trigger automations from these events without any fuss.

Frigate goes further. Because it publishes granular detection events over MQTT, you can build highly specific automations: "trigger only when a person is detected in zone 2, between 10pm and 6am, and the alarm is armed." The integration also gives you snapshot images in notifications, which is genuinely useful—a push notification that includes a photo of whoever triggered the alert.

For serious Home Assistant integration, Frigate wins on depth. For ease of setup, UniFi Protect wins.

Which One Should You Choose?

Honestly? It depends on what you value.

Choose UniFi Protect if:

• You want a system that just works, with minimal ongoing maintenance
• You're already in the UniFi ecosystem for networking
• You don't want to think about VPNs or reverse proxies for remote access
• Budget is less of a concern than convenience

Choose Frigate if:

• You're already comfortable with Home Assistant and don't mind YAML
• You want maximum flexibility in camera choice
• Deep automation integration matters to you
• You'd rather spend the money saved on cameras elsewhere in your setup
• Local-only operation and privacy matter to you

For me, both have their place. I love that my UniFi Protect setup at Property One is completely invisible—I never touch it. And I love that my Frigate setup at Property Two is endlessly configurable and deeply integrated with everything else in the house.

But if I were starting fresh today and building from scratch? I'd go Frigate. The cost difference is significant enough to matter, the Home Assistant integration is deeper, and the camera flexibility means I'm not locked into one vendor's hardware roadmap. The trade-off in setup complexity is real, but it's a one-time cost.

What NVR setup are you running? I'd love to hear whether you've gone down the Frigate path or stuck with a commercial system—and what's driven that decision. Drop a comment below.