If you own Sonoff switches and Tuya-branded plugs in the same house, the confusion is understandable. Both ecosystems are cheap, both are Chinese-origin, both route through an app that wants your Wi-Fi credentials and a cloud account, and both raise the same privacy questions this site already covers separately. So it’s a fair question to ask whether Sonoff is the same as Tuya, and whether eWeLink and Smart Life are one company wearing two skins.
No. They’re separate businesses with no partnership, no shared account system, and no native way to control one ecosystem’s devices from the other’s app. That answer alone resolves the “am I locked into one vendor” worry. What’s more useful is why the confusion happens, and where the difference actually shows up once you’re trying to run either ecosystem locally.
This piece is about the two companies and what that means for local control. For the device-level walkthroughs (getting a Tuya local key, setting up Sonoff DIY Mode, writing a Zigbee2MQTT converter for an unsupported Tuya device), see the linked guides throughout.
Who Actually Makes What
Sonoff is a hardware brand belonging to Shenzhen ITEAD Intelligent Systems Co., Ltd. The eWeLink app and cloud that Sonoff devices connect to are built by a separate but closely affiliated company, Shenzhen CoolKit Technology Co., Ltd.
That distinction matters more than it looks. eWeLink is not a Sonoff-only app: CoolKit licenses the platform to other manufacturers, so plenty of non-Sonoff hardware shows up in eWeLink too. CoolKit’s own member profile with the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the body that governs Matter, describes the company as a “one-stop smart hardware solutions” provider covering hardware design, embedded firmware, cloud hosting, and app development for other manufacturers who want to make their products smart.
Tuya is a different company again, and not a partner of either one. Tuya Inc. is publicly traded, listed on the NYSE as TUYA and in Hong Kong as HKEX: 2391, and its own corporate positioning is as a cloud platform provider rather than a consumer hardware brand. It sells IoT platform services, meaning cloud infrastructure, an app framework, device firmware, and developer tooling, that other brands license to build their own smart-device lines. Tuya doesn’t design or sell Sonoff hardware, and eWeLink is not a licensed Tuya deployment running under a different name. The two are competitors serving the same market, not two faces of one business.
| Tuya Inc. | ITEAD (Sonoff) + CoolKit (eWeLink) | |
|---|---|---|
| Business model | IoT platform services licensed to other brands | ITEAD sells Sonoff-branded hardware; CoolKit builds the eWeLink app and cloud, which also serves third-party brands |
| Public listing | NYSE: TUYA, HKEX: 2391 | Both private |
| App | Smart Life / Tuya Smart | eWeLink |
| Relationship to the other column | No partnership | No partnership |
Why the Confusion Makes Sense
The two companies aren’t related, but they’re solving the same problem for the same customer base, which is why their products end up looking and behaving almost identically. Both offer a turnkey path for a smaller hardware brand to ship a “smart” device without building cloud infrastructure from scratch. Both route setup through a mobile app, a QR code or Bluetooth handoff, and a cloud account tied to a region. Both default to cloud-dependent automations unless you deliberately go looking for a local alternative.
The confusion is structural rather than accidental. When an entire market segment runs the same playbook, get the device on Wi-Fi, bind it to an app account, run automations through the vendor’s cloud, a careful buyer has no easy cue that they’re dealing with two unrelated supply chains rather than one company under two names.
Where It Actually Matters for a Local Setup
The company distinction isn’t just trivia. It has three practical consequences.
No cross-app control. A Sonoff device won’t appear in Smart Life, and a Tuya device won’t appear in eWeLink, because the platforms don’t share device registries or authentication. eWeLink’s own community forum addresses this directly, and the consistent position there, from long-time community members and eWeLink staff alike, is that the two companies have no partnership and there’s no built-in bridge. That’s an ongoing community discussion rather than a dated policy announcement, so read it as a standing position rather than something with an effective date. Getting both ecosystems into one control surface means adding a third layer on top, such as Home Assistant, Homebridge, or Node-RED.
No shared local-key mechanism. Tuya’s Wi-Fi devices need a local key, extracted from the Tuya IoT developer platform, before something like LocalTuya or tuya-local can talk to them without the cloud. That mechanism is specific to Tuya’s device firmware and API. It has no eWeLink equivalent, because Sonoff’s local path (DIY Mode, and its LAN API) works through a completely different mechanism built by CoolKit. If you’re setting up local control for devices from both ecosystems, expect to follow two unrelated procedures, not one shared one.
Different Zigbee habits once you bypass to Z2M/ZHA. This is the part that’s easy to miss. On Sonoff’s own hubs (NSPanel Pro, the ZBBridge-P, iHost), pairing a third-party Tuya Zigbee device is unreliable. eWeLink staff have attributed this to the Zigbee protocol allowing brands to customise parts of the spec for their own needs, which is a polite way of saying vendors don’t all implement the same subset of the standard the same way.
Don’t factory-reset a Tuya or Sonoff device expecting it to reappear in the other ecosystem’s app. There’s no cross-pairing shortcut on either side, native or otherwise. A reset just removes it from its current app and forces you to set it up again from scratch, in the same app it started in.
That native-hub pairing problem mostly disappears once you go through Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA instead. Both ecosystems’ devices pair to the same generic Zigbee coordinator, and device-specific quirks get handled at the software layer, either by Z2M’s per-device converters or by ZHA’s quirk files, rather than by which app the device originally shipped with. That’s why this site can write setup guides for Sonoff’s SNZB series and Tuya’s TS0601-family devices side by side on the same coordinator hardware.
The underlying manufacturer-cluster habits do still differ. Many Tuya-branded Zigbee devices implement custom manufacturer-specific clusters and data points on top of the standard Zigbee radio, which is why Zigbee2MQTT ships dedicated TS0601-family converters for a lot of them. Most Sonoff-branded Zigbee devices sit closer to stock Zigbee 3.0 clusters and need less device-specific handling. eWeLink’s own store help centre puts it more strongly, characterising Tuya Zigbee as a proprietary implementation rather than a standard Zigbee 3.0 one, though that’s a competitor describing a competitor and should be weighted accordingly.
Treat all of that as a tendency, not a rule. Individual devices from both brands break the pattern in both directions, and the TS0601 custom converter guide is a good illustration of what the custom-cluster end of that spectrum actually looks like in practice.
What Doesn’t Change Once You Go Local
Being unrelated companies doesn’t change the fact that both ecosystems are fully bypassable, just via different documented paths.
| Ecosystem | Wi-Fi devices | Zigbee devices |
|---|---|---|
| Tuya / Smart Life | LocalTuya or tuya-local, using an extracted local key | Pair to Z2M/ZHA directly, no local key needed |
| Sonoff / eWeLink | DIY Mode / LAN API, no cloud account required for local control | Pair to Z2M/ZHA directly, same coordinator as anything else |
For the Tuya side, the Tuya local key extraction guide walks through getting the key, and LocalTuya vs tuya-local covers which integration to actually use once you have it. Zigbee-only Tuya devices skip the key requirement entirely, which this breakdown of why Tuya Zigbee devices don’t need a local key covers in more detail. If you’d rather keep a device on Wi-Fi but stop it from phoning home, blocking Tuya devices from the internet is the more surgical option.
For Sonoff, DIY Mode and the LAN API is the equivalent local path, and the ZBDongle-E vs ZBDongle-P comparison is worth reading before buying a coordinator if you’re planning to run both brands’ Zigbee devices on one dongle. On the privacy side specifically, what Tuya’s cloud sends and what eWeLink collects cover what each cloud actually gathers while the devices are still on the vendor app, which is worth reading before you decide the local path is worth the setup time.
Common Questions
Is Sonoff owned by Tuya?
No. Sonoff is a brand of Shenzhen ITEAD Intelligent Systems, and its app platform is built by Shenzhen CoolKit. Tuya Inc. is an unrelated, publicly listed company with no ownership stake in either.
Can I control Sonoff devices in the Tuya Smart Life app?
Not natively. The two platforms don’t share device registries or account systems, so a Sonoff device paired to eWeLink cannot be added to Smart Life. Bringing both under one roof requires a third layer such as Home Assistant, Homebridge, or Node-RED.
Are eWeLink and Smart Life the same app?
No. They’re separate apps from separate companies, with separate accounts and separate clouds. They look similar because they’re built on the same industry playbook, not because they share code.
Do Sonoff and Tuya Zigbee devices work together?
On each vendor’s own hub, cross-brand pairing is unreliable, which eWeLink attributes to vendors customising parts of the Zigbee spec. On a neutral coordinator running Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA, both brands generally coexist fine, because quirks are handled in software rather than by the hub vendor.
Does Sonoff use Tuya’s cloud servers?
No. Sonoff devices connect to the eWeLink cloud operated by CoolKit. Tuya’s cloud serves devices built on Tuya’s own platform. If you’d rather neither cloud saw your devices, the local paths above remove the dependency on both.
Bottom Line for a Mixed Household
Sonoff and Tuya are not the same company, don’t share a cloud, and won’t show up in each other’s apps no matter what you try. If you’re running both, plan on two separate local-control procedures rather than one, and expect the Zigbee side to behave a little differently between brands once you’re deep enough to be writing custom Z2M converters. None of that is a reason to avoid mixing the two ecosystems. It’s just two different vendors’ homework, not one vendor’s inconsistency.
What This Article Verified
This is a research-synthesis piece, not a hands-on test.
The corporate structure was checked and corrected during editing: Sonoff is a brand of Shenzhen ITEAD Intelligent Systems, while the eWeLink app and cloud are built by the closely affiliated but separate Shenzhen CoolKit Technology, whose CSA-IOT member profile confirms its business as hardware, firmware, cloud, and app development. Tuya Inc.’s dual listing (NYSE: TUYA, HKEX: 2391) and its positioning as a platform provider rather than a hardware brand were confirmed against Tuya’s own corporate description.
The “no partnership” position and the Zigbee-customisation explanation are paraphrased from eWeLink’s own community forum, including staff replies. Those are ongoing discussion threads with no confirmed posting or last-activity dates, so nothing here is presented as a dated announcement.
The generalisation that Tuya Zigbee devices lean toward custom manufacturer clusters more often than Sonoff Zigbee devices do remains a hedge rather than a stated rule. It’s a pattern visible across this site’s own device guides and echoed, more strongly and less neutrally, by eWeLink’s own store documentation. It is not a documented spec difference, and individual devices on both sides will contradict it. If you’re evaluating a specific device rather than the two companies in general, check that device’s own Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA support page rather than assuming the brand-level pattern holds.