Feature Comparison

This page lists features supported across different deployment types in detail.

Core / Enterprise Features

Features	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
MQTT 5.0 Broker	✅	✅	✅	Complete MQTT 5.0 protocol implementation
MQTT over QUIC	✅	✅	✅	Globally pioneering support In development for Cloud
MQTT Add-ons	✅	❌	✅	Shared subscription Exclusive subscription Delayed publish Auto-subscription Topic rewrite More customization options
Multi-protocol Gateways	✅	❌	✅	More industry device access
Multi-tenancy	✅	❌	✅	Higher system flexibility and utilization
Cluster Linking	✅	❌	✅	Seamless connection of devices and application data
Message Queue	✅	❌	✅	Unified architecture for data transmission and analysis
Stream Processing	✅	❌	✅	Higher reliability and disaster recovery capabilities (Coming soon)
Data Persistence	✅ Built-in RocksDB backend or external databases	N/A	N/A	Improved stability and reliability
Schema Registry	✅	❌	✅	Schema Registry ensures data consistency and compatibility
Message Codec	✅	❌	✅	Flexible message format conversion for: JSON, Avro, Protobuf, Custom codec (HTTP/gRPC)
Schema Validation	✅	✅	✅	Ensuring integrity and legality of messages
Rule Engine	✅	✅	✅	SQL-based built-in Rule Engine and real-time data processing
Flow Designer	✅	❌	✅	Easy orchestration of data integration
File Transfer	✅	❌	✅ In product roadmap	Unified platform data transmission
Kafka Integration	✅	✅	✅	Stream MQTT Data into Apache Kafka
Enterprise Data Integrations	✅ 40+	✅	✅ 40+	Accelerate business development and delivery speed
Troubleshooting	✅	❌	✅	Log Trace Slow Subscriptions
Cloud-Native & K8s	✅	N/A	N/A	Reduce system deployment and management costs
Edge Computing	✅	✅	✅	Reduce data transmission latency and costs Neuron NanoMQ

Scalability and Performance

Scalability / Performance	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Scalability	Up to 100 nodes cluster Up to 100 million MQTT connections per cluster	1000 auto scale	1000 - unlimited	Reaching 100M MQTT connections with EMQX 5.0
Availability	Core-Replica cluster	Masterless cluster	Masterless cluster
Reliability	Data persistence in RocksDB with highly available replication	Session persistence	Session persistence	Highly Reliable MQTT Data Persistence Based on RocksDB
Performance	5M+ MQTT messages per second	1000 MQTT messages per second	5M+ MQTT messages per second
Latency	1~5 millisecond	1~5 millisecond	1~5 millisecond
SLA	N/A	99.9% uptime	Up to 99.99% uptime

Clustering Architecture

Clustering Architecture	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Nodes of Cluster	100+	confidential	confidential	Large-scale clusters
Elastic and resilient scaling at runtime	✅	❌	✅	Higher system stability and resource utilization
Autoscaling	✅	✅	✅
Consistency	✅	✅	✅
Transaction	✅	✅	✅	Ensuring the atomicity and reliability of data operations
Network Split Recovery	✅	✅	✅	Cluster failure automatic repair
Node Evacuation & Cluster Rebalance	✅	N/A	N/A	Non-stop cluster maintenance
Autocluster Discoveries	✅	N/A	N/A	static: Discovery based on a static node list mcast: Discovery with UDP multicast mode dns: Discovery based on DNS records etcd: Discovery via etcd k8s: Discovery via Kubernetes service
Zero Downtime / Hot Upgrades	✅	N/A	N/A	Immediate repair of system vulnerabilities
Hot Patch	✅	N/A	N/A	Ensuring stable system operation
Overload Protection	✅	N/A	N/A	Improving system management efficiency
Multi-cluster Management	✅	N/A	N/A	Enhancing system stability
Cluster Metrics	✅	N/A	N/A

MQTT and Connectivity

MQTT & Connectivity	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
MQTT 3.x	✅	✅	✅
MQTT 5.0	✅	✅	✅
MQTT Retainer	✅	✅	✅
MQTT over TCP	✅	❌	✅
MQTT over TLS	✅	✅	✅
MQTT over WebSocket	✅	✅	✅
MQTT over QUIC	✅	❌	✅	EMQX is now the only MQTT broker in the world that supports QUIC transport.
LB (Proxy Protocol)	✅	❌	✅	Proxy protocol v1, v2
LB (Custom)	✅	❌	✅	GmSSL Smooth connection migration
IPv6 Support	✅	❌	✅
Multi-protocol Gateway	✅	❌	✅
MQTT-SN	✅	❌	✅
STOMP	✅	❌	❌
CoAP	✅	❌	✅
LwM2M	✅	❌	❌
OCPP	✅	❌	❌
JT/808	✅	❌	✅
GB/T 32960	✅	❌	❌

Security

Security	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
TLS/SSL	✅	✅	✅	Protect data transmission security: TLS 1.1, 1.2, 1.3
QUIC	✅	❌	✅	Enhance efficiency of weak network and mobile network data transmission
OCSP Stapling	✅	❌	✅	Provide more flexible security practices
Flapping Detect	✅	✅	✅ In product roadmap	Detect and block excessive connection attempts
Audit Logs	✅	✅	✅	Support audit tracing for important operations
Dashboard SSO	✅	✅	✅	Secure and simplified authentication processes
Dashboard / REST API RBAC	✅	✅	✅	Minimize permissions to ensure system security

Authentication and Authorization

Authentication / Authorization	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Username / Password	✅	✅	✅	Password-Based Authentication
JWT	✅	❌	✅	JWT Authentication
MQTT 5.0 Enhanced Authentication	✅	N/A	N/A	MQTT 5.0 Enhanced Authentication
LDAP Authentication	✅	❌	✅ In product roadmap
PSK Authentication	✅	❌	✅	Enable PSK Authentication
X.509 Certificates	✅	✅ Managed by EMQX Cloud	✅
Fine-grained Access Control	✅	✅	✅
Authentication Database Backends	✅	❌	✅
ACL Database Backends	✅	❌	✅

Data Integration

As EMQX evolves, it supports an expanding range of data integrations, including but not limited to those listed below.

Data Integration	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)
MQTT Bridge	✅	❌	✅
Webhook / HTTP Server	✅	✅	✅
Aliyun Tablestore	✅	✅	✅
Apache Kafka / Confluent	✅	✅	✅
Apache IoTDB	✅	❌	✅
Apache Pulsar	✅	❌	✅
AWS Kinesis	✅	❌	✅
AWS S3	✅	❌	✅
Azure Event Hubs	✅	❌	✅
Azure Blob Storage	✅	❌	✅
Cassandra	✅	❌	✅
ClickHouse	✅	❌	✅
Couchbase	✅	❌	✅
DynamoDB	✅	❌	✅
Elasticsearch	✅	❌	✅
GCP PubSub	✅	❌	✅
GreptimeDB	✅	❌	✅
HStreamDB	✅	❌	✅
InfluxDB	✅	❌	✅
Microsoft SQL Server	✅	❌	✅
MongoDB	✅	❌	✅
MySQL	✅	❌	✅
OpenTSDB	✅	❌	✅
Oracle Database	✅	❌	✅
PostgreSQL	✅	❌	✅
RabbitMQ	✅	❌	✅
Redis	✅	❌	✅
RocketMQ	✅	❌	✅
Snowflake	✅	❌	✅
Syskeeper	✅	❌	✅
TDengine	✅	❌	✅
TimeScaleDB	✅	❌	✅

Rule Engine

Rule Engine	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Schema Registry	✅	❌	✅	Ensure data format consistency
JSON Codec	✅	❌	✅
Avro Codec	✅	❌	✅
Protobuf Codec	✅	❌	✅
Sparkplug B Codec	✅	❌	✅
JSON Schema Validation	✅	❌	✅
Avro Validation	✅	❌	✅
ProtoBuf Validation	✅	❌	✅
Built-in Functions	✅	❌	✅	Functions available in SQL statements, rich built-in libraries, support custom extensions
jq Functions	✅	❌	✅	Efficient JSON data processing
Event Trigger	✅	❌	✅	Client events, event-driven business development
Schema Validation	✅	❌	✅
Message Transformation	✅	❌	✅

Extensibility

Extensibility	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Hooks	✅	N/A	N/A	Hooks
Plugins	✅	N/A	N/A	Plugins
Plugin Hot Loading	✅	N/A	N/A
Plugin Hot Configuration	✅	N/A	N/A
Gateways	✅	N/A	N/A
ExHooks / gRPC	✅	N/A	N/A

Operability

Operability	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Dashboard	✅	✅	✅	EMQX dashboard is feature-rich. Configs can be hot updated through the dashboard.
Configuration	✅ HOCON	N/A	N/A	The HOCON format is simple and concise.
HTTP API	✅	✅	✅
CLI	✅	✅	✅
Config Hot Updates	✅	N/A	N/A
Operational Auditing	✅	✅	✅

Observability

Observability	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Dashboard	✅	✅	✅	Monitor clusters in real time with an elegant dashboard
Metrics	✅	✅	✅	Node metrics
Grafana	✅	❌	✅
Prometheus	✅	❌	✅
Datadog	✅	❌	✅
OpenTelemetry	✅	❌	✅
Cluster Metrics	✅	N/A	N/A
Alarm Alerts	✅	✅	✅
Slow Subscription Monitoring	✅	❌	✅
Topic Monitoring	✅	❌	✅
Client Monitoring	✅	✅	✅
Log Trace	✅	✅	✅

Cloud Native and K8S

Cloud Native & K8s	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Docker	✅	N/A	N/A	Docker Hub
Kubernetes Operator	✅	N/A	N/A	EMQX Kubernetes Operator

Cloud Platform Availability

Cloud Platform	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
AWS Marketplace	✅	✅	✅	AWS Marketplace: EMQX Platform (Pay as you go)
Azure Marketplace	✅	✅	✅	Azure Marketplace: EMQX Platform
GCP Marketplace	✅	✅	✅	GCP Marketplace
AWS	✅	✅	✅
Azure	✅	✅	✅
GCP	✅	✅	✅

MQTT Tools and SDKs

MQTT Tools & SDKs	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
MQTT Desktop Client	✅	✅	✅	MQTT X - The best tool for learning MQTT. MQTTX: Your All-in-one MQTT Client Toolbox
MQTT CLI	✅	✅	✅	MQTTX CLI: A Powerful and Easy-to-use MQTT CLI Tool
MQTT Web Tool	✅	✅	✅	Feature-rich and Easy-to-use. MQTTX Web: Easy-to-use MQTT Websocket Client Tool
MQTT Benchmark	✅	✅	✅	GitHub - emqx/emqtt-bench: Lightweight MQTT benchmark tool written in Erlang
MQTT & JMeter	✅ JMeter Plugin	✅	✅	GitHub - emqx/mqtt-jmeter: MQTT JMeter Plugin
MQTT SDK for C	✅ NanoSDK	✅	✅	GitHub - nanomq/NanoSDK: MQTT 5.0-compliant SDK with QUIC support in NNG flavor
MQTT Erlang SDK	✅	✅	✅	GitHub - emqx/emqtt: Erlang MQTT 5.0 Client
MQTT iOS SDK	✅	✅	✅	GitHub - emqx/CocoaMQTT: MQTT 5.0 client library for iOS and macOS written in Swift GitHub - emqx/swift-mqtt: An MQTT Client over TCP and QUIC protocol
MQTT QUIC Client	✅	✅	✅	GitHub - emqx/quic: QUIC protocol for Erlang & Elixir

Support Services

Support Services	Self-Hosted (Enterprise)	MQTT as a Service (Serverless)	MQTT as a Service (Dedicated Flex)	Notes and Links
Technical Support	5×8, 7×24 Global Support	5×8 Global Support	5×8, 7×24 Global Support
Architecture Consulting	✅	❌	✅
Project Integration	✅	❌	❌
Custom Development	✅	❌	❌