OpenMQTTGateway 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 OpenMQTTGateway 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 Domoticz Companion DZVents Hyperion Domoticz Home Assistant Companion ESPEasy Sonoff DIY Tools Zigbee2MQTT Assistant Theengs Gateway
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 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 Calaos ESPHome Web Tools Habapp FHEM LHA Onloc Find My Device
Feature OpenMQTTGateway EMQX Category Home Automation Home Automation License GPL-3.0 Apache-2.0 Language C++ Erlang Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 64 MB 512 MB Deployment bare-metal, binary docker GitHub stars ★ 4,073 ★ 16,599 First released 2016 2026 Replaces SmartThings Hub —
Why pick each one
Choose OpenMQTTGateway if… Released under the GPL-3.0 license Active community (4.1k GitHub stars) Written in C++ Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM OpenMQTTGateway 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 OpenMQTTGateway or EMQX better? Neither is universally better. EMQX has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are OpenMQTTGateway and EMQX free and open-source? Yes. OpenMQTTGateway is licensed under GPL-3.0 and EMQX under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run OpenMQTTGateway and EMQX with Docker? OpenMQTTGateway: check the project docs for container support. EMQX: yes.