Thingsboard Review, Pricing & Features

ThingsBoard is an open-source IoT platform. Compare its free Community Edition against paid Professional, Private Cloud and ThingsBoard Cloud pricing.

Category
Internet of Things (IoT) & Home Automation
Pricing
freemium, from Free (Community Edition, self-hosted)
Verified
Not yet
Last updated
July 19, 2026
Founded
2016
Headquarters
New York, New York, United States
APIOpen SourceFreemiumSelf-Hosted

What Is ThingsBoard

ThingsBoard is an open-source IoT platform for connecting, managing and visualizing data from internet-connected devices. First released in 2016 and formalized as a company, ThingsBoard Inc, in 2018, it is headquartered in New York and maintains a large open-source Community Edition alongside several commercial deployment options.

The platform is used by teams building IoT products and internal fleets alike, from hardware startups self-hosting a free backend to enterprises running fully managed IoT dashboards through ThingsBoard's paid cloud and private cloud offerings.

Key Features

At its core, ThingsBoard connects devices over MQTT, HTTP and CoAP, then processes incoming telemetry through a visual rule engine that can trigger alarms, transformations or downstream actions. Multi-tenancy lets a single deployment serve multiple customers or business units in isolation, and ThingsBoard Edge extends processing to gateways and edge hardware.

For building user-facing dashboards, ThingsBoard ships with a library of more than 600 customizable widgets covering charts, maps, gauges and control panels, so teams can assemble IoT interfaces without building visualization components from scratch. Device provisioning and management tools round out the platform for teams operating large device fleets.

Pricing

The Community Edition is free and open source under Apache 2.0, with no limit on the number of devices, assets or messages, making it a genuinely usable option for production deployments with community-only support.

Paid options scale from the self-managed Professional Edition, starting around 10 dollars per month for a 10-device Maker plan up to roughly 499 dollars per month for 1,000 devices on Business, to the fully hosted ThingsBoard Cloud, which has its own free tier and paid plans up to about 749 dollars per month, and a managed Private Cloud tier starting near 1,499 dollars per month for the largest deployments, with custom Enterprise pricing above that.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Genuinely free, unlimited-device open-source Community Edition
  • Clear published pricing for Professional Edition and Cloud tiers
  • Large library of prebuilt dashboard widgets
  • Supports self-hosted, managed cloud and private cloud deployment models
  • Apache 2.0 license allows commercial use without licensing fees

Cons

  • Community Edition lacks white-labeling, advanced role management and Trendz Analytics
  • Self-hosting requires infrastructure and DevOps expertise
  • Cloud pricing can escalate quickly at high device or data-point volumes
  • Professional Edition still requires manual server management, unlike full SaaS
  • Some enterprise features are only available on Private Cloud or Enterprise plans

Pricing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ThingsBoard free?

The Community Edition is free and open source under Apache 2.0 with no device limits; paid tiers add support and enterprise features.

What is the difference between ThingsBoard Community and Professional Edition?

Professional Edition adds white labeling, advanced role management, Trendz Analytics and edge modules on top of the free Community Edition.

Does ThingsBoard offer a hosted cloud option?

Yes, ThingsBoard Cloud is a fully managed SaaS billed by device and data-point volume.

What license does ThingsBoard use?

The Community Edition is licensed under Apache 2.0.

How many devices can Community Edition support?

There is no device limit on the free Community Edition.

What protocols does ThingsBoard support?

ThingsBoard supports MQTT, HTTP and CoAP for device connectivity.

Who makes ThingsBoard?

ThingsBoard is developed by ThingsBoard Inc, founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York.

What is ThingsBoard Edge?

ThingsBoard Edge extends the platform's processing capabilities to gateways and edge hardware.

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