EMQX vs AppDaemon
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 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 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
Compare AppDaemon with
choose an app… Home Assistant Frigate ntfy Homebridge Tasmota ThingsBoard WLED Frigate NVR Companion go2rtc Zigbee2MQTT ESPHome Mosquitto Home Assistant Operating System evcc Domoticz Gladys Assistant Mozilla WebThings Gateway Home Assistant Supervisor SmartApp Bridge ioBroker Z-Wave JS UI openHAB Domoticz Plugin Hub Jeedom OpenHAB Cloud Zwave-JS Server FHEM
Feature EMQX AppDaemon Category Home Automation Home Automation License Apache-2.0 Apache-2.0 Language Erlang Python Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 256 MB Deployment docker docker, bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 16,599 ★ 962 First released 2026 2016 Replaces — SmartThings
Why pick each one
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 Choose AppDaemon if… Powerful programmatic automations Full Python flexibility AppDaemon details
Frequently asked questions Is EMQX or AppDaemon 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 EMQX and AppDaemon free and open-source? Yes. EMQX is licensed under Apache-2.0 and AppDaemon under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run EMQX and AppDaemon with Docker? EMQX: yes. AppDaemon: yes.