WLED vs Mosquitto
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 WLED with
choose an app… Home Assistant Frigate ntfy Homebridge Tasmota ThingsBoard EMQX Frigate NVR Companion go2rtc Zigbee2MQTT ESPHome 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 Calaos ESPHome Web Tools Habapp FHEM LHA Onloc Find My Device
Compare Mosquitto with
choose an app… Home Assistant Frigate ntfy Homebridge Tasmota ThingsBoard EMQX Frigate NVR Companion go2rtc Zigbee2MQTT ESPHome 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 Mozilla WebThings Gateway Home Assistant Supervisor SmartApp Bridge ioBroker Z-Wave JS UI openHAB AppDaemon Domoticz Plugin Hub Jeedom OpenHAB Cloud Zwave-JS Server FHEM
Feature WLED Mosquitto Category Home Automation Home Automation License MIT EPL-2.0 Language C++ C Setup difficulty Easy Easy Min. RAM 16 MB 64 MB Deployment binary, source docker, bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 18,518 ★ 11,101 First released 2016 2009 Replaces Philips Hue SmartThings
Why pick each one
Choose WLED if… Easy to flash and use Vibrant effects WLED details Choose Mosquitto if… Extremely lightweight Rock-solid reliability Ubiquitous in smart homes Mosquitto details
Frequently asked questions Is WLED or Mosquitto better? Neither is universally better. WLED has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are WLED and Mosquitto free and open-source? Yes. WLED is licensed under MIT and Mosquitto under EPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run WLED and Mosquitto with Docker? WLED: check the project docs for container support. Mosquitto: yes.