Smart locks are sold on fingerprint sensors, Matter badges, and app screenshots. The one number that describes how well the thing resists being physically forced open — the ANSI/BHMA security grade — is usually buried in a spec sheet, stated only as a vague “BHMA certified,” or missing entirely. We compiled the grade claim (or its absence) for 29 widely sold smart locks in a sortable data table, and the pattern of what’s not stated turned out to be as informative as the grades themselves.
What the grades are
The Builders Hardware Manufacturers Association (BHMA) writes ANSI-accredited performance standards for door hardware. Two matter for smart locks:
- ANSI/BHMA A156.40 — Residential Deadbolts. The standard most full-replacement smart deadbolts are graded against. (Residential products were historically graded under A156.2 and related commercial standards; BHMA later split out residential-specific standards like A156.40 so home hardware is tested against home-relevant conditions rather than commercial-duty cycles.)
- ANSI/BHMA A156.36 — Auxiliary Locks. Covers deadbolts and other secondary locking hardware; some smart locks (Ultraloq’s U-Bolt Pro, the Nest x Yale) cite their grade against this standard instead.
Both use the same three-tier scale: Grade 1 is the highest, Grade 3 the lowest — the reverse of how most consumer ratings run, which trips up plenty of shoppers. The tiers are separated by how much punishment the lock survives in standardized tests: operational cycle counts (how many lock/unlock cycles before failure), bolt strength and projection, and forced-entry resistance — hammer blows, wrenching/torque on the cylinder, and kick-in style strikes against the bolt. A Grade 1 deadbolt must survive more cycles and harder impacts than a Grade 2, and Grade 2 more than Grade 3. Schlage and Kwikset market their top residential tier as “Grade AAA” — their own label for meeting the highest residential grade — which our table maps to Grade 1 where the manufacturer states that equivalence.
One thing the grade does not measure: any of the smart parts. WiFi security, app account protection, fingerprint spoofing resistance — none of it is in scope. The grade describes the mechanical lock; the electronics ride along ungraded.
Why so many smart locks state no grade
Of the 29 models in our table, only about half state a specific numeric grade. The gaps cluster into three honest categories:
Retrofit locks mostly can’t have one. August’s Wi-Fi Smart Lock, SwitchBot’s Lock and Lock Pro, and similar units mount over your existing deadbolt’s interior thumbturn. They have no exterior cylinder, bolt, or strike of their own — the parts the grade actually tests belong to whatever deadbolt is already in your door. August and SwitchBot state no grade, which is the intellectually honest position. Level and Aqara, by contrast, publish Grade 1 and Grade 3 claims respectively on retrofit or partially retrofit designs (Level Bolt, Aqara U50) — and it’s fair to ask how much of that grade describes their hardware versus the host lock’s. Our table records both patterns as found rather than normalizing them.
Certification costs money and shoppers don’t ask. Budget-priced locks (Wyze at $80, TP-Link’s Tapo line at ~$70) either state Grade 3 — the entry tier — or nothing. When the market buys on fingerprint sensors and price, a security grade nobody checks is an easy line item to skip.
“BHMA certified” without a number. Some brands gesture at certification generally without stating which grade a specific SKU earned. Where we couldn’t pin a grade to the exact model, the table says “not stated” rather than borrowing a sibling model’s number.
The disputed claims
Three rows in our table are marked disputed, and one is worth spelling
out. For the Lockly Secure Pro, some retailer listings advertise “ANSI
Grade 1” — but a PCWorld review reports Lockly’s own position as “built to
Grade 2 standards, not independently certified.” We could not reconcile
the marketing claim with the certification directory, so the table records
the conflict rather than picking a side (see the row’s basis and our
research notes from 2026-07-19). The Kwikset Halo (non-fingerprint) and
Eufy’s current flagship line carry the same flag for the same reason:
sources conflict, and we won’t guess.
The bigger caveat: these are manufacturer claims
Here is the part we want to say plainly. BHMA maintains a public Certified Products Directory — the actual registry of what’s been independently tested and certified. We attempted to verify our table against it and could not: the directory is a legacy ASP.NET WebForms application whose search we could not drive read-only in our research pass. We did confirm that Schlage, Yale, Kwikset, TP-Link, Ultraloq, and others are enrolled BHMA brands — but not which specific smart-lock SKUs hold live certifications.
That means every Grade 1, 2, and 3 in our table is sourced from the
manufacturer’s own spec or marketing page, not from an independently
confirmed directory listing. Each row’s basis field says exactly where
its number came from. Manufacturer grade claims from the major brands are
generally credible — falsely claiming a certification is a legal risk few
large companies take — but until we spot-check the directory, read our
table the way you’d read a UTQG tire grade: the maker’s claim about a
real standard, not an audited result.
So who’s really Grade 1?
Nine of the 29 models claim the top grade: Schlage’s Encode, Encode Plus, and Sense; Kwikset’s Halo Touch and Aura; Level’s Lock+ and Bolt; and Ultraloq’s U-Bolt Pro and Bolt NFC — collected in the table’s Grade 1 view. With the retrofit caveat on the Level Bolt noted above, the full-replacement deadbolts on that list — particularly from Schlage and Kwikset, whose mechanical-lock pedigree predates the smart features by a century — are the strongest grade claims in the set. If physical security is why you’re buying a deadbolt, start there, sort the full table by grade, and treat any lock that won’t state a grade at all as having answered the question.