SHSelfHostIndex

Mozilla WebThings Gateway vs ThingsBoard

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?
MO Mozilla WebThings Gateway Open gateway for the decentralized web of things VS TH ThingsBoard Open-source IoT platform for device management and data
FeatureMozilla WebThings GatewayThingsBoard
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseMPL-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptJava
Setup difficultyMediumHard
Min. RAM512 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentbare-metal, dockerdocker, kubernetes, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 2,643★ 22,200
First released20182017
ReplacesSmartThings, Google HomeAWS IoT, Azure IoT

Why pick each one

Choose Mozilla WebThings Gateway if…

  • Open standards-based
  • Privacy-focused
Mozilla WebThings Gateway details

Choose ThingsBoard if…

  • Powerful IoT platform
  • Highly customizable dashboards
ThingsBoard details

Frequently asked questions

Is Mozilla WebThings Gateway or ThingsBoard better?

Neither is universally better. ThingsBoard has the larger community, while Mozilla WebThings Gateway is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Mozilla WebThings Gateway and ThingsBoard free and open-source?

Yes. Mozilla WebThings Gateway is licensed under MPL-2.0 and ThingsBoard under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Mozilla WebThings Gateway and ThingsBoard with Docker?

Mozilla WebThings Gateway: yes. ThingsBoard: yes.

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