Shelly Launches a $50 Security Camera That Prioritizes Local Control Over Cloud Fees

Local-first just hit a price point worth taking seriously. According to The Verge, Shelly rolled out a $49.99 security camera that runs its core flow without a subscription — livestream over Wi-Fi, local capture to a microSD card, and motion events that fire automations across the rest of your Shelly gear. Cloud recording and person/pet/vehicle detection are bolted on as a paid tier. The headline is that the baseline works without begging a vendor's servers for permission.

What $50 actually wires up

This isn't a spec-sheet flex, and Shelly isn't pretending otherwise. The sensor tops out at 1080p with a 110° horizontal and 70° vertical field of view, night vision, and no battery — so plan on routing a USB-C cable to wherever it lives. For anyone building flows, that's fine. The motion event is exposed locally, which means you can pair the camera with a Shelly floodlight, a relay, or a Home Assistant script and have a trigger that doesn't need to phone home to be useful. After the flood sensor launch last month with genuinely solid battery life, Shelly is clearly leaning into budget hardware that respects local logic.

The subscription tax, decoded

Pay the tier and the cloud kicks in alongside object classification — people, pets, vehicles — so your automations can branch on what's actually tripping the sensor. Useful if you want the porch light to wake only for humans and not every passing raccoon. But for anyone running their own detection pipeline locally, this is vendor sugar. The core feed stays on your card, the events stay scriptable, and the camera doesn't go blind if Shelly's cloud wobbles or pivots into a new pricing model next quarter.

The contrast this week is sharp. As reported by Bosch's media service, the company's smart home arm marked its tenth anniversary with a Radiator Thermostat II +M PRO rollout and a new Eyes+ subscription feature for its camera platform — person recognition parked behind a paywall. Two vendors, two philosophies, same launch window.

Where to keep your eyes open

The $50 sticker is honest, but watch the deployment math. USB-C power means an outlet nearby or a PoE-to-USB-C injector if you're chasing clean installs. The 1080p ceiling caps digital zoom for plate-recognition workflows. And while Shelly's local-first posture is solid, the smart detection still sits behind the paywall — so if person/pet differentiation matters to your logic, fold the subscription into the real cost of ownership.

The unit lands in Shelly's online store and other resellers, in black or white. No shipping date is pinned yet, which is the one piece of this announcement still running in vapor mode until the SKU hits a cart.