SHSelfHostIndex

OpenMQTTGateway vs Piper

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?
OP OpenMQTTGateway Bridge for RF, IR, BLE, and sensors to MQTT VS PI Piper Fast, local neural text-to-speech for voice assistants
FeatureOpenMQTTGatewayPiper
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseGPL-3.0MIT
LanguageC++C++
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM64 MB256 MB
Deploymentbare-metal, binarydocker, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 4,073★ 5,066
First released20162023
ReplacesSmartThings HubAmazon Polly, Google TTS

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 Piper if…

  • Natural-sounding offline TTS
  • Very efficient
Piper details

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenMQTTGateway or Piper better?

Neither is universally better. Piper has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are OpenMQTTGateway and Piper free and open-source?

Yes. OpenMQTTGateway is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Piper under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run OpenMQTTGateway and Piper with Docker?

OpenMQTTGateway: check the project docs for container support. Piper: yes.

Related comparisons