SHSelfHostIndex

Button Card vs EMQX

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted home automation options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
BU Button Card Highly customizable button card for Home Assistant Lovelace VS EM EMQX Scalable MQTT broker
FeatureButton CardEMQX
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptErlang
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM32 MB512 MB
Deploymentsourcedocker
GitHub stars★ 2,476★ 16,599
First released20192026
Replacesproprietary smart home dashboards—

Why pick each one

Choose Button Card if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (2.5k GitHub stars)
  • Written in TypeScript
Button Card details

Choose EMQX if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 16.6k GitHub stars
  • Written in Erlang
EMQX details

Frequently asked questions

Is Button Card or EMQX better?

Neither is universally better. EMQX has the larger community, while Button Card is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Button Card and EMQX free and open-source?

Yes. Button Card is licensed under MIT and EMQX under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Button Card and EMQX with Docker?

Button Card: check the project docs for container support. EMQX: yes.

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