Last checked: October 13, 2026.
Alexa is the voice assistant inside Amazon’s Echo speakers and displays, and the hub a lot of American smart homes are built around. Amazon is not going anywhere, but almost everything Alexa does runs through Amazon’s cloud, and Amazon has a habit of retiring its own gadgets.
Why 86%
- Starting point94%A tech giant that is clearly staying in smart home.
- Track record−6Killed the Dash Button, Echo Look and Halo, and removed on-device voice processing in 2025.
- Works without the cloud−2Voice requests always need Amazon’s cloud, though Matter and Zigbee devices pair straight to an Echo.
- Our estimate86%
The good news: Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and keeps launching new Echo hardware, so Alexa itself is not about to disappear. Many Echo devices also work as Matter controllers, and some have a built-in Zigbee hub, which makes it easier to move your devices somewhere else later.
The bad news: Amazon has shut down plenty of its own smart gadgets, including the Dash Button in 2019, the Echo Look in 2020 and the Halo health band in 2023. In March 2025 it also removed the option to process voice requests on the device itself on the few Echo models that offered it, so every request now goes to Amazon’s servers.
If you use Alexa
- Pick Matter or Zigbee devices that pair straight to your Echo, instead of gadgets that only work through their maker’s own cloud skill.
- Check the privacy settings in the Alexa app. You can choose not to save your voice recordings.
- Keep a second way to control the important stuff, like a physical switch or the device’s own app, in case Alexa has an outage.