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Cloud · head to head

Longhorn vs Eclipse Mosquitto

Longhorn logo

Longhorn

Cloud

Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Eclipse Mosquitto logo

Eclipse Mosquitto

Networking

Small, EPL-licensed MQTT broker that runs on hardware other brokers cannot

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Longhorn there is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.; Eclipse Mosquitto there is no clustering: Mosquitto is a single process, so high availability means building your own failover and accepting session loss on switchover.
  • They diverge on capability: Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Longhorn and Eclipse Mosquitto actually diverge.

Attributes where Longhorn and Eclipse Mosquitto differ
AttributeLonghornEclipse Mosquitto
PlatformsLinux, KubernetesLinux, Windows, macOS, Docker
CategoryCloudNetworking

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Longhorn

  • Per-volume controllers
  • Synchronous replication
  • Snapshots and backups
  • Volume expansion
  • Disaster recovery volumes
  • Web interface

Only in Eclipse Mosquitto

  • MQTT 5.0 support
  • Very small footprint
  • Bridging
  • WebSockets listener
  • Command line clients
  • Dynamic security plugin

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Longhorn

  • An on-premises Kubernetes cluster with local disks and no SAN that needs replicated persistent volumesnot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • Edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole clusternot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • A K3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloadsnot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • A team that wants snapshots and S3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licencesnot Eclipse Mosquitto

Eclipse Mosquitto

  • A home or building automation stack where the broker must run on the same small computer as everything elsenot Longhorn
  • An industrial gateway that buffers local telemetry and bridges selected topics to a cloud brokernot Longhorn
  • Local development and testing of MQTT clients without provisioning a cloud IoT servicenot Longhorn
  • An air-gapped deployment where a broker with no licence server and no phone-home behaviour is a requirementnot Longhorn

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Longhorn

  • There is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
  • Synchronous replication across nodes means write latency depends on the slowest replica and the network between nodes, which makes it a poor fit for latency-sensitive databases.
  • Every replica is a full copy, so three-way replication consumes three times the raw capacity, unlike erasure-coded systems that are far more space efficient.
  • It is designed for block storage on modest clusters and does not scale to the node counts or throughput that Ceph or a commercial array handles, so growth eventually forces a migration.
  • Recovery from certain degraded states, such as a volume stuck detaching or replicas failing to rebuild, requires manual intervention and knowledge of Longhorn internals that is not widely held.

Eclipse Mosquitto

  • There is no clustering: Mosquitto is a single process, so high availability means building your own failover and accepting session loss on switchover.
  • Persistence is a local file rather than a replicated store, so a disk failure or an unclean shutdown can lose retained messages and queued QoS traffic.
  • Practical capacity is a few thousand concurrent clients on typical hardware, so a growing device fleet eventually forces a migration to a clustered broker.
  • The Eclipse Public Licence is weak copyleft rather than permissive, which some legal teams treat as a blocker when embedding the broker in a shipped commercial product.
  • There is no commercial support to buy from the project, so production incidents rely on community mailing lists or on paying a third party who happens to know the codebase.

Pricing, plan by plan

Longhorn

Free
  • LonghornFree
    • Apache 2.0 licensed, no licence fee
    • Community support via GitHub and Slack only
    • No vendor SLA or escalation path

Eclipse Mosquitto

Free
  • Eclipse MosquittoFree
    • Eclipse Public License 2.0 with Eclipse Distribution Licence
    • MQTT 5.0, 3.1.1 and 3.1
    • No client or message limits beyond your hardware

Which should you pick?

Choose Longhorn if

  • You need per-volume controllers.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Kubernetes.
  • You also want synchronous replication.
Longhorn review

Choose Eclipse Mosquitto if

  • You need mqtt 5.0 support.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker.
  • You also want very small footprint.
Eclipse Mosquitto review

Questions people ask

Is Longhorn or Eclipse Mosquitto better?
Neither clearly leads. Longhorn starts at Free and Eclipse Mosquitto at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Longhorn or Eclipse Mosquitto?
Longhorn starts at Free and Eclipse Mosquitto at Free.
Does Longhorn or Eclipse Mosquitto run on more platforms?
Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes. Eclipse Mosquitto runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker.
Can I use Longhorn for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Longhorn best used for?
Longhorn is most often used for an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes, edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster, a k3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloads, a team that wants snapshots and s3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licences. Of those, an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes and edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster are not what Eclipse Mosquitto is typically brought in for.
What can Longhorn do that Eclipse Mosquitto cannot?
Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion. Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support, Very small footprint, Bridging, WebSockets listener.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Longhorn: Who do we call when it breaks?

Nobody, unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime, which includes commercial support for Longhorn. This is the decisive question for production use.

Eclipse Mosquitto: Can Mosquitto be clustered?

No. It is a single process. High availability requires an external failover arrangement you build yourself.

Longhorn: How much capacity does replication cost?

Full copies, so three replicas means three times the raw capacity. Budget accordingly rather than assuming erasure coding efficiency.

Eclipse Mosquitto: What licence is it?

Eclipse Public License 2.0 alongside the Eclipse Distribution License, a weak copyleft rather than a permissive licence.

Longhorn: Is it suitable for production databases?

For modest workloads yes, but synchronous replication adds write latency and high-transaction databases usually want something faster.

Eclipse Mosquitto: How many clients can it handle?

A few thousand concurrent connections on ordinary hardware; beyond that, use a clustered broker.

Eclipse Mosquitto: Does it support MQTT 5?

Yes, along with 3.1.1 and 3.1.

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