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Networking · head to head

Eclipse Mosquitto vs Soketi

Eclipse Mosquitto logo

Eclipse Mosquitto

Networking

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Soketi logo

Soketi

Developer Tools

Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: 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.; Soketi maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
  • They diverge on capability: Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Eclipse Mosquitto and Soketi differ
AttributeEclipse MosquittoSoketi
PlatformsLinux, Windows, macOS, DockerLinux, macOS, Windows
CategoryNetworkingDeveloper Tools

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 Eclipse Mosquitto

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

Only in Soketi

  • Pusher protocol compatibility
  • Presence and private channels
  • Horizontal scaling
  • App management backends
  • Webhooks
  • Prometheus metrics

What people use each for

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

Eclipse Mosquitto

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

Soketi

  • A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Eclipse Mosquitto

Where each one falls short

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

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.

Soketi

  • Maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
  • Dependency drift on Node and uWebSockets.js will eventually force you to fork or migrate, and that cost is unbudgeted at the point you adopt it.
  • There is no commercial support to buy, so a production incident at three in the morning is entirely your problem with no escalation path.
  • Scaling beyond a single node needs Redis and careful configuration, and getting presence channels correct across nodes is a genuine source of subtle bugs.
  • It implements the Pusher protocol rather than tracking it, so any protocol feature Pusher adds later will not appear, and the compatibility guarantee slowly decays.

Pricing, plan by plan

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

Soketi

Free
  • SoketiFree
    • MIT licensed
    • Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
    • No vendor billing

Which should you pick?

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

Choose Soketi if

  • You need pusher protocol compatibility.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want presence and private channels.
Soketi review

Questions people ask

Is Eclipse Mosquitto or Soketi better?
Neither clearly leads. Eclipse Mosquitto starts at Free and Soketi at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Eclipse Mosquitto or Soketi?
Eclipse Mosquitto starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
Does Eclipse Mosquitto or Soketi run on more platforms?
Eclipse Mosquitto runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Eclipse Mosquitto for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Eclipse Mosquitto best used for?
Eclipse Mosquitto is most often used for a home or building automation stack where the broker must run on the same small computer as everything else, an industrial gateway that buffers local telemetry and bridges selected topics to a cloud broker, local development and testing of mqtt clients without provisioning a cloud iot service, an air-gapped deployment where a broker with no licence server and no phone-home behaviour is a requirement. Of those, a home or building automation stack where the broker must run on the same small computer as everything else and an industrial gateway that buffers local telemetry and bridges selected topics to a cloud broker are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
What can Eclipse Mosquitto do that Soketi cannot?
Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support, Very small footprint, Bridging, WebSockets listener. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Eclipse Mosquitto: Can Mosquitto be clustered?

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

Soketi: Is Soketi still maintained?

Barely. The maintainer has stated that available time is very limited and releases have been sparse; treat it as community-maintained.

Eclipse Mosquitto: What licence is it?

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

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.

Eclipse Mosquitto: How many clients can it handle?

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

Soketi: What does it cost?

Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.

Eclipse Mosquitto: Does it support MQTT 5?

Yes, along with 3.1.1 and 3.1.

Soketi: What are people moving to?

Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.

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