Whole home energy monitors

A whole home energy monitor clamps onto the mains in your electrical panel and tells you what the house is drawing. Install means opening a live panel, which is electrician work for most people, and that cost belongs in the comparison.

In the catalog: 8
Work without a hub: All of them
Most common radios: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Wired Ethernet, Matter
Price range: $22 to $349

What decides compatibility

Installation is inside the breaker panel. Budget for an electrician unless you are genuinely qualified.
Clamp count decides how much detail you get. Two clamps see the whole house. More clamps see individual circuits.
Some monitors infer appliance-level detail from the whole-house waveform. Accuracy varies a lot by household.
Solar and battery setups need a monitor that understands bidirectional flow.

How these connect to your system

A works-with badge does not say how the device gets there, and the path changes what you get. Direct means the maker built the integration and the device's own features tend to come with it. Via Matter means the standard controls work and anything unusual about the device may not carry over. Via a hub means you need a second box, usually the maker's own, before it works at all.