New Smart Lock Platform Comparison Report for Lock Manufacturers Evaluates TTLOCK, TUYA, and KORELOCK. Which should you choose?
Rob Goff, VP of Product and Co-Founder of KoreLock, has created a practical comparison to help lock manufacturers, OEMs, and access control brands evaluate smart lock technology platforms. The report examines TTLOCK, TUYA, and KORELOCK, outlining each provider’s technology, business model, and strategies for launching connected locks.
Which Smart Lock platform should lock manufacturers choose? The short answer.
TTLOCK is a China-based platform that gets you to market at the lowest cost because of its one-size-fits-all model and because you're renting your product's brain. Your lock runs on a shared app, a shared cloud, and a roadmap you don't control.
TUYA is a China-based platform that gives you a massive smart-home IoT ecosystem. But locks are one product category among thousands, and your access control product inherits a consumer smart-home architecture rather than one built for security.
KORELOCK is a US-based Smart Lock platform that gives you a purpose-built OEM platform for lock manufacturers. Lock manufacturers who want to own their brand, customer relationships, and white-label mobile and web apps, and offer US-based management and commercial-grade access control, with a team to build custom features.
The right choice comes down to how much of your product you're willing to let someone else control.
(If you're a step earlier, deciding whether to use any platform versus building your own stack, start with our report: “The Great Debate: Should Lock Manufacturers Build Their Own Smart Lock Technology or Buy a Platform?”. This article assumes you've already concluded what most manufacturers do: the platform math wins.)
Platform Definition: These are the ten layers of a Smart Lock platform.
Before comparing, let’s define what a platform includes. A complete smart lock platform spans ten layers:
Embedded lock hardware
Reader hardware (NFC and card readers, keypads, QR scanners, Bluetooth)
Lock firmware
Cloud infrastructure with a digital twin per device
Credential ecosystem, including mobile keys and wallet credentials
Device and cloud security
OTA update management
Partner integration APIs
White-label web and mobile apps
Factory tooling and QA test systems
And this is the conservative version. It doesn't count regulatory certification (FCC, CE, UL, Bluetooth qualification, and now cybersecurity requirements like the EU's RED), fleet lifecycle tooling for commissioning, support, and RMA, or the machinery behind recurring revenue: managing subscriptions, gating features by tier, and actually billing for it.
Keep this ten-layer Smart Lock platform feature list in mind, because TTLOCK, TUYA, and KORELOCK cover very different portions of it, and every layer a platform doesn't cover becomes your problem.
Summary: Smart Lock platforms side-by-side comparison
Dimension | TTLOCK | TUYA | KORELOCK |
Built for | Lock factories needing instant software
| Smart-home device makers | Lock manufacturers building a connected lock business |
Platform coverage (of 10 layers) | Modules, firmware, cloud, shared app | Modules, cloud, app frameworks, ecosystem | All ten, including reader hardware and factory/QA tooling |
Brand & customer relationship | Shared TTLOCK app; end users are TTLOCK users | OEM app options on shared platform | Fully white-label apps; end users are your users |
Data hosting | TTLOCK-operated cloud (China-based company) | TUYA-operated cloud (China-based company)
| KORELOCK-operated cloud on AWS, US-based company; dedicated AWS IoT instance available |
Device security | Varies by factory; no public disclosures | Module-level; consumer smart-home oriented
| Secure boot, signed OTA, EAL 6+ secure element, mTLS |
White-label mobile App | Offers SDK or OEM app paths, but built on TTLOCK’s infrastructure and account architecture | Offers SDK or OEM app paths, but built on TUYA’s infrastructure and account architecture
| Kully white-label, lock brand-owned apps are the default model: the lock brand’s end users are your customers, not the platform's.
|
Mobile & wallet credentials | Proprietary eKeys | Ecosystem app credentials | Mobile keys, PIN, NFC/card, plus wallet credentials via specialist partners
|
Custom feature development | Roadmap outside your control | Enterprise-scale, slow-moving
| Nimble US team; customer-driven features |
Access control depth | Strong for rentals/residential | Consumer smart-home oriented
| Commercial-grade multifamily, hospitality, SMB, enterprise |
Smart-home ecosystem | Limited without bridges | Excellent (Alexa, Google, Matter)
| API-driven; PMS and building-automation focus |
Minimum viable volume | High-volume commodity economics
| Scale-oriented | Built for the long tail; 5-50k unit products are the business model |
Engineering & support | China-based | China-based, scale-oriented
| US-based, partnership model |
Time to market
| Fastest | Fast | 6 months to production-ready, typically |
Best for | Budget consumer locks, STR channel | Locks inside a smart-home lineup
| Lock brands serving commercial & residential who want to own the product |
Deep dive: What each Smart Lock platform actually is
TTLOCK (Sciener – China-based)
TTLOCK is a vertical SaaS system based in China, built specifically for smart locks: PCBAs and modules, the shared TTLOCK mobile app, a cloud API, and an SDK. Hundreds of lock factories ship TTLOCK-compatible hardware, which is why it dominates budget and mid-tier OEM projects and short-term rental deployments.
Strengths:
Near-zero software development
Fast time to market
Mature rental-oriented features (timed PINs, one-time codes, eKeys, gateways)
Very low cost
Limitations:
Your product runs inside TTLOCK's app and cloud unless you fund SDK-based custom development.
Your end users are TTLOCK's, not yours, and your reputation rides on a shared app you don't control. (Its public app-store ratings are worth reading before you commit your brand to it.)
Your lock behaves like every other TTLOCK lock, so differentiation is minimal.
Measured against the ten layers, TTLOCK covers modules, firmware, cloud, and a shared app. Brand ownership, custom features, and commercial-grade account structures are out of reach and building a SaaS revenue layer or an enterprise offering on top hits a ceiling fast.
There's a transparency problem too: Sciener, the private Chinese company behind TTLOCK, publishes no customer, infrastructure, or security-response disclosures. Security researchers who reported vulnerabilities in Sciener firmware through a 2024 CERT coordination process noted the absence of a public vendor response.
TUYA (China-based)
TUYA is a horizontal IoT platform-as-a-service based in China. Smart locks are one vertical inside an ecosystem spanning lighting, cameras, and appliances. It provides connectivity modules, cloud services, app frameworks (including OEM app paths), and integrations with Alexa, Google Home, and Matter.
Strengths:
Large ecosystem and smart-home interoperability
A reasonable fit when your lock is one node in a broader smart-home portfolio
Limitations:
Not lock-first. Credential hierarchies, audit requirements, and commercial account structures run shallower than dedicated access platforms, and reader hardware, factory tooling, and lock-specific QA aren't what a horizontal platform does.
At 100,000+ manufacturers and enormous scale, customer-specific feature development isn't the model. You adapt to TUYA, not the other way around.
Platform jurisdiction is a common objection from North American and European commercial buyers.
KORELOCK (US-based)
KORELOCK is a turnkey US-based OEM platform built exclusively for lock manufacturers and access control providers. It covers all ten platform layers mentioned above.
The design goal: a manufacturer converts its existing offline electronic locks into connected smart locks under its own brand, with its own customer relationships.
Strengths: built for the lock manufacturer business model.
You own the brand, the app identity, and the customer relationship, along with the recurring revenue that comes with them.
Full credential stack: mobile keys, permanent, temporary, and algorithmic PINs, NFC and cards, and web credentials. Wallet-grade mobile credentials come through specialist credential partners. (We ran our own build-vs-buy test here too: entering Apple's and Google's ecosystems directly is exactly the kind of expensive, off-mission project we advise against.)
Commercial-grade account hierarchies for multifamily, retail, SMB, and enterprise.
Security that survives a buyer's review: secure boot with signed firmware, signed and verified OTA updates with rollback protection, hardware-backed key storage in a Common Criteria EAL 6+ certified secure element, TLS with mutual authentication and per-device certificates, and SOC 2-compliant AWS cloud infrastructure. That posture maps directly onto the EU RED cybersecurity requirements now mandatory for connected devices in Europe.
Hosting runs on KORELOCK-operated AWS. Most customers use the shared multi-tenant environment; a dedicated AWS IoT instance is available if you need isolation, compliance, or data residency guarantees.
KORELOCK supports Apple Wallet and Google Wallet and delivers wallet-grade mobile credentials through specialist credential partners, whose stacks are integrated into the platform. This gives partner products access to wallet credential capability without each product line needing its own multi-year ecosystem admission.
As a US-based company, KORELOCK offers the jurisdiction and support posture many North American commercial buyers require.
Unlike the platform giants, KORELOCK builds custom features for its customers, including account-level security controls built to your requirements. New product roadmap requests actually ship.
Limitations:
Higher engagement than buying a TTLOCK board off the shelf. KORELOCK is a platform partnership, not a commodity module.
If you only need a low-cost consumer lock with no brand strategy, TTLOCK is cheaper and faster.
If your lock is primarily a smart-home accessory that needs deep Alexa and Matter integration out of the box, TUYA's ecosystem is hard to beat.
The strategic question: renting vs. owning
Manufacturers looking for a TTLOCK alternative usually name the same frustrations: the shared app, a roadmap they can't influence, B2B features they can't build. But the TTLOCK-vs-TUYA debate misses the real question. Both platforms answer: "how do I make my lock connected?" Neither answers the question that determines a lock manufacturer's next decade: who owns the customer relationship once the lock is connected, and who controls the roadmap?
On a shared-platform model, your end users are the platform's users, living in the platform's app. Your app-store presence is absent or a thin reskin. Subscription revenue flows to the platform, not to you. And when your channel demands a feature (an account-level security control, a PMS integration, a new credential type), you file a ticket into a roadmap serving a hundred thousand other manufacturers.
Let's be fair about what the giants do well: volume. TTLOCK and TUYA power a large share of the world's OEM smart locks, and for commodity products at commodity prices, that scale is appealing. It's also beside the point. Scale is precisely why no single manufacturer's roadmap matters to them, and commodity volume is not what a brand building a commercial product line is buying.
KORELOCK hosts and operates the cloud, like any platform. The difference is what sits on top: white-label apps that make the end user your customer. The US-based KORELOCK engineering team builds customer-requested features on real timelines, with the option of dedicated infrastructure when a deal requires it. You're not renting a generic platform. You're building your product on a platform that adapts to you.
That distinction matters most in multifamily and commercial channels, where buyers ask about jurisdiction, security certifications, long-term support commitments, and PMS integration. It's why "TTLOCK ceiling" stories are common: businesses launch quickly on a shared platform, then discover they can't build the B2B offering their channel is asking for.
The volume question nobody else will discuss
There's one more axis worth naming. TTLOCK's economics assume commodity volume; TUYA's assume ecosystem scale. Neither model is built for the niche product: the connected cabinet lock, gate latch, or storage lock forecasting 5-50k units a year. Consumers expect connectivity in those form factors now (the expectation followed the lock off the front door), but the big platforms and the big lock brands alike can't justify serving them.
That long tail is specifically what KORELOCK was built for. Because the full ten-layer platform already exists and is amortized across many products, a 50k-unit niche product isn't a rounding error. It's the business model. If your product lives in a niche the giants ignore, that's not a reason to settle for a commodity platform. That’s why a purpose-built one exists.
Time to market
How long does it take to launch on each Smart Lock platform? TTLOCK is fastest for commodity products: a couple of months, using off-the-shelf boards and the shared app. TUYA projects typically run a few months. KORELOCK takes a project from start to production-ready in about 6 months, with the time going into what's genuinely new about your product rather than platform infrastructure.
The Bottom line
Which Smart Lock technology platform should a lock manufacturer choose? For a factory shipping budget consumer locks at volume, choose TTLOCK. For a brand where the lock is one node in a smart-home lineup, choose TUYA. For a lock manufacturer building a connected product line it intends to own (brand, customer relationships, revenue, and roadmap), especially in the niche segments the giants won't touch, choose KORELOCK.
KORELOCK, Inc. is a B2B IoT Smart Lock technology platform for lock manufacturers and access control providers, offering embedded firmware, PCBAs, white-label mobile and web apps, and cloud SaaS. Learn more at korelock.com.
