Calaos 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?
Compare Calaos with
choose an app… Home Assistant Frigate ntfy Homebridge Tasmota ThingsBoard WLED Frigate NVR Companion go2rtc Zigbee2MQTT SmartHomeNG
Compare EMQX with
choose an app… Home Assistant Frigate ntfy Homebridge Tasmota ThingsBoard WLED Frigate NVR Companion go2rtc Zigbee2MQTT ESPHome Mosquitto HACS Home Assistant Operating System evcc Scrypted Mushroom Piper Bubble Card OpenMQTTGateway Domoticz Companion DZVents Hyperion Domoticz Home Assistant Companion ESPEasy Sonoff DIY Tools Gladys Assistant Rhasspy Mozilla WebThings Gateway openWakeWord Button Card Awtrix Light OpenBeken Home Assistant Supervisor SmartApp Bridge deCONZ ApexCharts Card OpenRemote diyHue card-mod Mini Media Player TinyTuya Server Home Assistant Floorplan HA-Bridge ESPresense Govee2MQTT ioBroker OpenEnergyMonitor Emoncms HASS.Agent Wyoming Satellite Z-Wave JS UI OwnTracks Recorder LocalTuya openHAB Frigate Cards Python Matter Server OpenHASP Tasmoadmin AppDaemon Ring-MQTT EMHASS Domoticz Plugin Hub Zigbee2MQTT Frontend OpenSprinkler Grott Growatt Monitor Zigbee2MQTT Assistant SIP Irrigation Control Jeedom Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 OpenHAB Cloud OpenVoiceOS SmartIR Theengs Gateway Zwave-JS Server SOLECTRUS SmartHomeNG Victron Venus OS Bridge Dahua2MQTT Streamline Smart Home Dashboards ESPHome Web Tools Habapp FHEM LHA Onloc Find My Device
Feature Calaos EMQX Category Home Automation Home Automation License GPL-3.0 Apache-2.0 Language Shell Erlang Setup difficulty Hard Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 512 MB Deployment bare-metal docker GitHub stars ★ 73 ★ 16,599 First released 2013 2026 Replaces Loxone —
Why pick each one
Choose Calaos if… Polished native UIs Fully self-contained Calaos 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 Calaos or EMQX better? EMQX is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Calaos if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Calaos and EMQX free and open-source? Yes. Calaos is licensed under GPL-3.0 and EMQX under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Calaos and EMQX with Docker? Calaos: check the project docs for container support. EMQX: yes.