I have a nest thermostat, but the strongly worded warnings are scary.

And, I would really love to wire my nest into home assistant, but getting past the Google house of horrors is even scarier.

Are there any good thermostats that can be used with home assistant? I would really like to start understanding my energy usage in a safe way.

what's so special about nest? I have bought a Venstar thermostat, that connects to HA via WiFi, with no cloud server involved. It's a plasticky square with a liquid crystal screen, but I don't know why I would a thermostat of all things (that I touch like once a month) to be a conversation piece.

Even if it wasn't evil, I'd consider buying an expensive one a waste of money, which is kinda important considering I'm looking to save money.