SHSelfHostIndex

Home Assistant Operating System 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?
HO Home Assistant Operating System Embedded operating system optimized for Home Assistant VS MO Mosquitto Lightweight MQTT message broker
FeatureHome Assistant Operating SystemMosquitto
CategoryHome AutomationHome Automation
LicenseApache-2.0EPL-2.0
LanguagePythonC
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM1,024 MB64 MB
Deploymentone-click, bare-metaldocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 7,390★ 11,101
First released20192009
ReplacesSmartThings, HubitatSmartThings

Why pick each one

Choose Home Assistant Operating System if…

  • Easiest full-featured HA install
  • Managed add-ons
Home Assistant Operating System details

Choose Mosquitto if…

  • Extremely lightweight
  • Rock-solid reliability
  • Ubiquitous in smart homes
Mosquitto details

Frequently asked questions

Is Home Assistant Operating System or Mosquitto better?

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

Are Home Assistant Operating System and Mosquitto free and open-source?

Yes. Home Assistant Operating System is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Mosquitto under EPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Home Assistant Operating System and Mosquitto with Docker?

Home Assistant Operating System: check the project docs for container support. Mosquitto: yes.

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