HiveMQ Cloud

Best Self Hosted Alternatives to HiveMQ Cloud

A curated collection of the 5 best self hosted alternatives to HiveMQ Cloud.

Managed MQTT broker for connecting IoT devices and applications. Provides scalable, secure MQTT messaging with high availability, monitoring, client integrations, and hosted operational management of broker infrastructure.

Alternatives List

#1
EMQX

EMQX

EMQX is a high-performance MQTT broker and IoT messaging platform with clustering, security controls, a SQL rules engine, and integrations to databases and event systems.

EMQX screenshot

EMQX is a scalable MQTT broker and real-time messaging platform designed to connect large fleets of devices and stream data reliably to applications, clouds, and analytics systems. It supports modern MQTT features and provides operational tooling for running production IoT and IIoT deployments.

Key Features

  • MQTT 5.0/3.1.1/3.1 broker with pub/sub messaging
  • Protocol gateway support for MQTT-SN, CoAP, and LwM2M (via gateways)
  • Masterless clustering for high availability and horizontal scalability
  • SQL-based rules engine for filtering, transforming, and routing in-flight messages
  • Built-in integrations/bridges to common databases and message queues
  • Security features including TLS, X.509, JWT-based auth, and ACL-based authorization
  • Management dashboard and HTTP API for administration and automation
  • Observability integrations including Prometheus and OpenTelemetry

Use Cases

  • IoT device connectivity and telemetry ingestion at scale
  • Event-driven integration from MQTT topics to databases, queues, and webhooks
  • Industrial and connected-vehicle messaging backbones with high availability

Limitations and Considerations

  • Licensing changed to Business Source License (BSL) 1.1 for recent versions
  • Operating large clusters requires careful capacity planning and monitoring

EMQX is a strong choice when you need a robust, production-ready MQTT backbone with clustering, security controls, and flexible routing/integration for real-time device data. It fits both edge-to-cloud pipelines and enterprise IoT deployments where reliability and throughput are critical.

15.8kstars
2.4kforks
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#2
Eclipse Mosquitto

Eclipse Mosquitto

Eclipse Mosquitto is a lightweight, open-source MQTT broker supporting MQTT 5.0 and 3.1.1, plus client libraries and CLI tools for pub/sub messaging.

Eclipse Mosquitto screenshot

Eclipse Mosquitto is an open-source message broker that implements the MQTT protocol (MQTT 5.0, 3.1.1, and 3.1). It is designed to be lightweight and efficient, making it suitable for IoT-style publish/subscribe messaging from small devices to full servers.

Key Features

  • MQTT broker with support for MQTT v5.0, v3.1.1, and v3.1
  • TLS support for encrypted client connections
  • Authentication options including username/password and pluggable security extensions
  • Access control via ACLs to restrict topic publishing and subscribing
  • WebSockets support for MQTT clients in web environments (optional build feature)
  • Includes client utilities (mosquitto_pub, mosquitto_sub) and C/C++ client libraries

Use Cases

  • IoT messaging backbone for sensors, gateways, and embedded devices using pub/sub
  • Smart home and industrial telemetry aggregation and command distribution
  • Lightweight MQTT broker for development, testing, and internal messaging systems

Limitations and Considerations

  • Advanced enterprise features like clustering and high availability are not part of the core open-source broker
  • Some capabilities (for example, WebSockets or SRV lookups) may require optional build-time dependencies

Mosquitto is a solid choice when you need a small, fast, standards-compliant MQTT broker with strong protocol support and common security mechanisms. It scales from simple local testing to production deployments where reliable MQTT message routing is required.

10.5kstars
2.6kforks
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#3
ejabberd

ejabberd

ejabberd is an Erlang/OTP-based messaging server providing XMPP chat and presence, MQTT broker capabilities for IoT, and SIP services for real-time communications.

ejabberd screenshot

ejabberd is an open-source, scalable real-time messaging platform built on Erlang/OTP. It provides an XMPP server for chat and presence, and can also act as an MQTT broker and SIP service for broader real-time and IoT workloads.

Key Features

  • XMPP server with support for group chat, publish-subscribe, and many protocol extensions
  • MQTT broker functionality for lightweight device and IoT messaging
  • SIP service support and interoperability options for real-time communications
  • Native clustering designed for high concurrency and large deployments
  • Security-focused design with modern TLS support and configurable authentication options
  • Multiple deployment options including packages and container images

Use Cases

  • Team or consumer chat systems using XMPP (including multi-user chat)
  • IoT telemetry and device messaging using MQTT
  • Real-time communication backends that combine messaging and signaling needs

Limitations and Considerations

  • Full capabilities often depend on correct selection and configuration of modules and protocol extensions
  • Running large clusters typically requires operational expertise in tuning, monitoring, and database/storage choices

ejabberd is a mature, extensible platform suited to organizations needing a reliable messaging core at scale. Its multi-protocol approach makes it useful for both classic chat deployments and modern IoT-oriented messaging architectures.

6.5kstars
1.5kforks
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#4
VerneMQ

VerneMQ

VerneMQ is a high-performance, distributed MQTT broker for scalable, highly available IoT and M2M messaging, with clustering, TLS, WebSockets, plugins, and integrations.

VerneMQ screenshot

VerneMQ is a high-performance, distributed MQTT message broker designed for scalable, highly available messaging in IoT, M2M, mobile, and web applications. Built on Erlang/OTP, it supports clustering, low-latency publish/subscribe, and fault tolerance on commodity hardware.

Key Features

  • MQTT 3.1, 3.1.1, and MQTT 5.0 protocol support (including QoS 0/1/2)
  • Horizontal and vertical scaling with clustering and high availability
  • TLS encryption and WebSocket support for MQTT over the web
  • Authentication and authorization via built-in plugins and extensible hooks
  • Multiple integration options including database-backed auth and HTTP webhooks
  • Offline message storage and session handling features such as shared subscriptions and session balancing
  • Administration HTTP API and operational visibility features (logging, tracing, status page, $SYS tree)

Use Cases

  • Reliable IoT device connectivity for telemetry ingestion and command/control
  • Industrial and smart infrastructure messaging with high availability requirements
  • Mobile and web realtime messaging based on MQTT publish/subscribe

Limitations and Considerations

  • Advanced customization may require writing plugins or Lua scripts depending on integration needs
  • Some features (for example, offline storage) rely on specific backend components such as LevelDB

VerneMQ is a solid choice when you need a production-grade MQTT broker that can handle large connection counts and tolerate network failures. Its clustering model, plugin architecture, and integration options make it suitable for both lab deployments and industrial-scale systems.

3.5kstars
420forks
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#5
BunkerM

BunkerM

Containerized MQTT management solution bundling a Mosquitto broker with a web UI for ACLs, dynamic security, client management, monitoring and cloud bridges.

BunkerM is an open-source, containerized MQTT management platform that bundles a pre-configured Mosquitto broker with backend services and a web-based management interface. It provides ACL and client management, dynamic security controls, real-time monitoring, and optional cloud bridge integrations for IoT deployments.

Key Features

  • Pre-packaged Mosquitto MQTT broker with a web management UI and backend services
  • Dynamic security module for runtime user/role/group ACLs and permission management
  • Real-time dashboard with connected clients, message statistics, retained message counts and activity logs
  • Client management: create clients, set credentials, assign roles/groups and control connections
  • Role and group-based ACLs with topic permission rules and priority handling
  • Protocol support for MQTT v3.1.1 and v5, TLS/MQTTS and WebSockets/WSS
  • Container-first deployment with Docker images and persistent volume support for data and configuration
  • Cloud bridge integrations (Pro/Enterprise) for AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub and other backends
  • Enterprise features (Pro/Enterprise): RBAC, SSO/LDAP, clustering/HA, enhanced monitoring and REST APIs

Use Cases

  • Manage and monitor MQTT brokers and fleets of MQTT clients in edge and IoT environments
  • Enforce fine-grained topic-level access control and role-based permissions for devices and applications
  • Bridge on-premises MQTT deployments to cloud IoT platforms and exporters for metrics/analytics

Limitations and Considerations

  • Several enterprise-grade features (clustering/HA, LDAP/SSO, advanced analytics, some cloud bridges) are gated behind Pro/Enterprise editions
  • Audit trail, offline authentication and certain protocol extensions require higher-tier or on-demand/custom implementations
  • Primary distribution is containerized; production deployments should plan persistent storage, TLS cert management and appropriate network/firewall configuration

BunkerM is suitable for small to large MQTT deployments that need an integrated management interface and dynamic ACL controls. It lowers the operational overhead of running Mosquitto while offering paid upgrades for enterprise requirements.

329stars
17forks
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Why choose an open source alternative?

  • •Data ownership: Keep your data on your own servers
  • •No vendor lock-in: Freedom to switch or modify at any time
  • •Cost savings: Reduce or eliminate subscription fees
  • •Transparency: Audit the code and know exactly what's running