Softwr

Networking · head to head

Eclipse Mosquitto vs StarRocks

Eclipse Mosquitto logo

Eclipse Mosquitto

Networking

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
StarRocks logo

StarRocks

Databases

Apache 2.0 MPP analytical database built for joins on open table formats

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.; StarRocks self-hosting is a genuine operations job: frontend and backend node roles, tablet distribution, compaction and materialised view refresh all need an owner, and there is no small-team-friendly single-binary mode.
  • They diverge on capability: Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support, StarRocks covers Cost-based optimiser.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Eclipse Mosquitto and StarRocks differ
AttributeEclipse MosquittoStarRocks
PlatformsLinux, Windows, macOS, DockerLinux, Docker, Kubernetes
CategoryNetworkingDatabases

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 StarRocks

  • Cost-based optimiser
  • Lakehouse query engine
  • Primary key tables
  • Materialised views
  • Shared-data mode
  • MySQL wire protocol

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 StarRocks
  • An industrial gateway that buffers local telemetry and bridges selected topics to a cloud brokernot StarRocks
  • Local development and testing of MQTT clients without provisioning a cloud IoT servicenot StarRocks
  • An air-gapped deployment where a broker with no licence server and no phone-home behaviour is a requirementnot StarRocks

StarRocks

  • Customer-facing analytics where queries join a fact table to several dimensions and must return in well under a secondnot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • Querying an Iceberg lakehouse directly without copying data into a proprietary warehouse formatnot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • Replacing a ClickHouse deployment that has become unmanageable because every new question needs another denormalised tablenot Eclipse Mosquitto
  • Real-time analytics fed by change data capture where rows must be updated in place rather than appendednot 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.

StarRocks

  • Self-hosting is a genuine operations job: frontend and backend node roles, tablet distribution, compaction and materialised view refresh all need an owner, and there is no small-team-friendly single-binary mode.
  • CelerData is by far the dominant contributor despite Linux Foundation stewardship, so the practical roadmap risk is the same as any single-vendor open source project.
  • It inherits a MySQL-flavoured SQL dialect from its Doris ancestry, so queries written for PostgreSQL, Snowflake or Trino need rewriting rather than porting.
  • Ecosystem support is thinner than ClickHouse or Trino: fewer client libraries, fewer managed hosting options and a much smaller pool of engineers who have run it in production.
  • Memory pressure under concurrent large joins is a common production failure, and the tuning knobs for query memory limits are unforgiving compared with a cloud warehouse that just scales.

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

StarRocks

Free
  • StarRocksFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence
    • Linux Foundation governance
    • No usage or node limits
  • CelerData Cloud$undefined/year
    • Managed StarRocks from the primary contributor
    • BYOC and serverless deployment options
    • Enterprise support and SLAs

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 StarRocks if

  • You need cost-based optimiser.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
  • You also want lakehouse query engine.
StarRocks review

Questions people ask

Is Eclipse Mosquitto or StarRocks better?
Neither clearly leads. Eclipse Mosquitto starts at Free and StarRocks at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Eclipse Mosquitto or StarRocks?
Eclipse Mosquitto starts at Free and StarRocks at Free.
Does Eclipse Mosquitto or StarRocks run on more platforms?
Eclipse Mosquitto runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker. StarRocks runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
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 StarRocks is typically brought in for.
What can Eclipse Mosquitto do that StarRocks cannot?
Eclipse Mosquitto covers MQTT 5.0 support, Very small footprint, Bridging, WebSockets listener. StarRocks covers Cost-based optimiser, Lakehouse query engine, Primary key tables, Materialised views.

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.

StarRocks: Is StarRocks open source?

Yes, Apache 2.0, governed under the Linux Foundation since 2023.

Eclipse Mosquitto: What licence is it?

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

StarRocks: How does it differ from ClickHouse?

StarRocks is built for joins across a star schema with a cost-based optimiser; ClickHouse is fastest on denormalised single tables.

Eclipse Mosquitto: How many clients can it handle?

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

StarRocks: Who maintains it?

CelerData, formerly StarRocks Inc, is the dominant contributor and sells the managed service.

Eclipse Mosquitto: Does it support MQTT 5?

Yes, along with 3.1.1 and 3.1.

StarRocks: Can it query Iceberg tables directly?

Yes, along with Hudi, Delta Lake, Hive and Paimon, with a local cache for repeat queries.

Share

Related pages

More on Eclipse Mosquitto

More on StarRocks

Keep looking

Other head to heads