August vs Yale: Retrofit or Replace?

August and Yale both make excellent smart locks, and Yale actually owns August, so this isn’t a rivalry so much as a choice between two philosophies of how a smart lock should fit your door.Get that choice right and either brand is a great buy; get it wrong and you’ll wish you’d bought the other one.

The short version

Buy Augustif you want to keep your existing keys and exterior hardware — especially if you rent — because it clips onto the inside of the deadbolt you already have and nobody outside can tell. Buy Yale if you own the home, want a proper exterior keypad for code entry, and like the idea of a swappable radio module that lets you move the lock to Matter or Z-Wave later.

Side by side

August: keep your keys, change nothing outside

August’s whole appeal is that it’s invisible from the street.It mounts on the inside of your existing single-cylinder deadbolt, so the exterior hardware and your physical keys keep working exactly as before — you just add app control, auto-unlock as you arrive, and remote access. That makes it the obvious pick for renters (no landlord is going to object to a device that doesn’t alter the door) and for anyone who simply doesn’t want to give up their keys. The 4th generation builds Wi-Fi in, so there’s no separate bridge, and it supports Apple Home as well as Alexa and Google. The trade-offs: the interior escutcheon is bulky, there’s no keypad in the box, and battery life is only okay with Wi-Fi always on.

Yale: replace the lock, add a keypad, future-proof it

The Yale Assure Lock 2 takes the opposite approach: it replaces the entire deadbolt and, on keypad versions, adds an exterior touchpad so you (and guests) can enter a code with no phone and no key at all. The clever part is the swappable radio module: if you move ecosystems later, you can change the lock’s connectivity to Matter or Z-Wave instead of buying a whole new lock — genuine future-proofing in a category that usually forces a rebuy. Just note that this model ships in several radio versions, so you have to match the module to your ecosystem when you order, and Wi-Fi drains batteries a little faster than a hub connection.

Which should you buy?

If you rent, or you love your existing keys and don’t want to touch the outside of the door, August is the clear answer. If you own the home and want a keypad, key-free entry, and a lock you can carry into whatever ecosystem you build next, Yale is the more capable, more future-proof pick. Neither is wrong — they’re answers to different doors. For where they sit against the rest of the field, including Apple Home Key options like Schlage and Level, see the best smart locks roundup.