Nuki drops Wi-Fi paywall for its smart lock, but raises the lock's price

We liked pretty much everything about the Nuki Smart Lock, a compact retrofit model that came out earlier this year, except for one thing: the monthly fee to use its Wi-Fi features.

Yep, that’s right: Nuki wanted its customers to pay $5.90 a month for Nuki Premium, a subscription plan that was required to access the Nuki Smart Lock remotely via Wi-Fi. The alternative was either Bluetooth connectivity, meaning you’d need to be physically near the lock to control it, or patching the Thread-enabled lock into your local network via Matter.

That charge for Wi-Fi access always seemed a little nuts, and indeed, Nuki never actually imposed the fee, instead pushing it off until September and then again to December. Now, the Austria-based company tells TechHive it will drop the fee for Nuki Prem